Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Ad Astra: The Movie!

Episode Date: September 25, 2019

Brad Pitt sets out across the solar system to save Earth in the new space epic. Host Mat Kaplan enjoys a far-reaching conversation with the co-screenwriter of Ad Astra that touches on the film’s meaning, the mythic journey of its protagonist, its spectacular images, and where it strays from known science. Registration for the Planetary Society’s 2020 Day of Action in Washington DC is open! Chief Advocate Casey Dreier has the lowdown. You might win a beautiful, rotating MOVA Earth globe in this week’s What’s Up space trivia contest. Hey! That’s LightSail 2 floating above our pale blue dot. Learn more about this week’s guests and topics at:  http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/2019/0925-2019-2019-ethan-gross-ad-astra.htmlSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ad Astra, the movie, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome, I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. Have you seen it? Ad Astra is the new science fiction epic starring Brad Pitt, and created by director and writer James Gray and co-writer Ethan Gross. Ethan is my guest for a fun, wide-ranging conversation about the film and much more. Want to own a rotating planet Earth? We're giving away a solar-powered MOVA globe in this week's What's Up Space Trivia Contest. Wait, is that LightSail 2 floating above it? It sure is. We'll start by diving back within the dreaded Washington, D.C. Beltway with Planetary Society Chief Advocate

Casey Dreyer. Casey, welcome back to the weekly edition. Of course, we'll be talking again as part of the space policy edition, but not quite as soon as we expected because you have graciously allowed me to delay the October program from October 4, which would have been, is the first Friday in October, to October 11. I really appreciate it just because life's going to get crazy with a lot of travel on behalf of the show and the society. Yeah. Well, we'll just have to make that episode extra good to make it worth the additional week's wait. So no pressure or anything. Well, I know one way to help with that, and that is we'll bring in your colleague, Brendan. Yep, yep. We'll have an update. It should be a lot of stuff happening in politics, let's say. The fiscal year for the United States

government begins on October 1st, notably in between now when we're recording this and when we will release the space policy edition. And the current plan is to have no plan, but at least they're extending the current budget for it sounds like two months. That's the plan. That's the where things seem to be going right now. Notably, and this is kind of interesting for space policy folks like us, there's no special dispensation to let NASA begin work on a human rated lunar lander. Now, this basically means that any budget NASA would get coming up in November, delayed by a couple of months would be the moment where they could really kick up a mission planning for something like that. kick up a mission planning for something like that. So this delays lunar landing and really, again, throws into question a 2024 deadline that the president and vice president have set down for NASA. So this is not good news for them, even though the government will stay open. Wow, that's pretty huge. So this will be, if it happens as you suspect, a two-month

continuing resolution, they're called? Yeah, it basically takes the current year budget that we're in and just extends it. So it doesn't change anything. And what that means is that NASA can't start anything new. It also means that NASA can't cancel anything it proposed to cancel. So everything already approved whose future is up for debate, like the WFIRST space telescope. That will continue on for those two months. But at the same time, things NASA wants to do now, like the Artemis lunar lander, will be delayed until they are officially approved by Congress through the appropriations legislation that hopefully now we'll get in November. Boy, this strikes home

for me because I'm going to be back in Huntsville, Alabama. It's one of those trips I'm taking and had hoped to conduct an interview about the Artemis lunar lander, that spacecraft that will take humans back down to the surface of the moon. And now I kind of wonder if there's going to be much to talk about, but I guess we'll find out. There is other important local news, and that has to do with your day of action that we talked about in the September Space Policy Edition. And now you're ready to start taking applications. Yes, the registration is open for our 2020 day of action. It's going to happen a little earlier this year, February 9th and 10th in Washington, D.C. earlier this year, February 9th and 10th in Washington, D.C.

Anyone with basically an address based in the United States is welcome to attend. Individuals under 18 need to come with a legal parent or guardian, but we encourage people to sign up. You can go to planetary.org slash day of action. You can join hundreds of other Planetary Society members, space advocates. The staff of the Planetary Society's advocacy team, like me, will be there. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of work, not in a bad way, but it's intense. It's a lot of fun. You get to meet your members, you get to hang out and talk about space. We schedule a lot of opportunities to engage and learn about things in addition to going out and

advocating directly to members of Congress and their staff for spaceflight, for space exploration, for space science, these really core issues that really drive us here at the Planetary Society. It's a lot of fun again, and you can sign up at planetary.org slash day of action. Again, something that we've talked about on Space Policy Edition, which is really striking to me, which is how many of these folks, these volunteers who on their own time come to Washington and have these meetings with the representatives or the representative staff who leave it feeling better about their government, feeling better about what's going on inside the Beltway in Washington,

D.C. It's pretty heartening. It is. And God knows we could take all those opportunities we can get for that experience. I literally had a participant last year say that he had walked into this really not knowing what to expect. And he was leaving it with a whole new respect for the process. Again, it's not a panacea for the entire federal government, but it's an aspect of our nation's system of government that really does work still. And it's a really rejuvenating process. It's an exciting process, particularly if you're a citizen of the United States, you get to go in and say what you think. And it's really empowering to do that for something you're passionate about, which hopefully, if you're listening to this, is space exploration. We set up all of your meetings for you. So we take care of that.

We give training to you in person and online. So you walk in ready to go. You're going in with other members who share your values. And again, you get to kind of be rolling through the halls of power in Washington, D.C. with people who want to listen to your opinions about space. It's a pretty amazing experience, really. As our boss says, space brings out the best in us and sometimes brings us to Washington, D.C. Thanks, Casey. I sure hope I can join you there next year. I hope to see you there, Matt. Lots of plans ahead. That's Casey Dreyer. He's the chief advocate for the Planetary Society. Catch us in the extended show, the Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio.

That next one delayed by one week, just one week. Don't worry, we'll be there to Friday, October 11. Yeah, they stole my tagline, but I forgive the makers of Ad Astra. Screenplay co-writer Ethan Gross prefers the full Latin phrase when he thinks about the new and spectacular film, Ad Astra Per Aspera, which the Wikipedia translates as, through hardships to the stars. Not all of those hardships are external. up some of the most challenging roadblocks. Ad Astra star Brad Pitt's character must confront and overcome his personal demons as he makes an odyssey to the outer solar system. There is a strong mythic core to his journey, one that is punctuated by harrowing action and breathtaking visuals. Don't expect to see the story unfold within the strict confines of science as we know

it. Even with lots of cooperation from NASA, liberties have been taken, just as they've been taken in nearly all other science fiction films. That's just one of the many topics Ethan and I covered in this conversation, recorded the day after Ad Astra's Hollywood premiere. Ethan Gross, thank you very much for joining us on Planetary Radio, and thanks for your contribution to a film that I got to say I enjoyed enormously, having just been to the premiere last night. Thank you very much. Nice to be here. So you told me moments ago you were at the premiere, but you didn't stay to see the film. You just went there to be under the lights and have pictures taken?

Pretty much. I was planning on seeing the film there, but I was out there talking to some people and then it already started. And I don't like barging in once it's already started and causing, you know, in my mind, a disturbance. Well, that's decent of you. I like the reason you told me before we started recording that you wanted there to be at least one good press shot that your mom could see. Yeah, my mom has vicarious joy from these things for me. I have been very uncomfortable by them, but I have vicarious joy from her vicarious joy. So it's like a vicious circle, I guess, of vicarious joy.

I know what you're talking about because I's why, I think that's why my mother comes to our live shows when we have an audience because she's not a space geek, but she does like to see me on stage. Yeah, I'm sure. I don't know what you look like, but I'm sure you look great and why wouldn't she want to see you up there? No, you know, face for radio is the old joke. All right.

And I have a New Yorker described my voice as reedy. There was a profile on James Gray in the New Yorker called me slender, which is great. And he called me shy, which is very accurate. But then he called me reedy voiced with a creeping wit. I like the creeping wit, sort of. That's great. The reading voice makes me a little nervous to do phone interviews. So excuse the reading-ness. I'd like to be accused of having that kind of wit. Anyway, I got one other thing to thank you about before we get to this movie.

And that was your work on that great TV series, Fringe. Because I was one of the multitude who thought that you were really on something there. And I know you worked on it for several years, right? Yeah. That was really fun to be in the writer's room. Great collaboration, just anything goes kind of thing. And I love the fact that that show always reinventing itself from year after year and sometimes episode to episode. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, with the science of it was intriguing. You know, it wasn't always totally realistic, but it was always thought provoking. And yeah, it was a show that had a lot of really good followers, not enough to keep it going, but I loved it. Anything with parallel universes and Leonard Nimoy going back and forth between the two of them is okay in my book. Yeah, exactly.

Ad Astra. Like I said, I saw it last night and I want to warn everybody, there are probably going to be spoilers and there is stuff that you may not want to have spoiled in this film. So, you know, you may not want to hear this section of Planetary Radio. Let me start with the guy that the story revolves around. I've heard this described as Brad Pitt's best performance. I can easily believe that. And I'd love to talk to you about his character because it's so central to the story. I mean, he gives plenty of evidence that at least outwardly, this is a guy who has the right stuff, as Tom Wolfe would put it, but there's a lot more going on underneath that veneer, it seems.

That's right. Outwardly, he's got the right stuff, but inwardly, he has a void created by some personal issues, by his relationship or lack of relationship with his father. And that's something that he really only discovers the further out in space that he, he gets. It's almost like the, the deeper he goes, the more inward he becomes because he's left with nothing but his own thoughts and memories. And along with the revelations of what his father has been doing in the, in the past couple of decades and things that he did not quite know about his father. So it's a very subtle

and complex performance, but Brad Pitt is great in it. I mean, it's the whole movie. There's a reason why the poster is just a big, some of the posters are with a big shot of his face. That's worth everything. Whenever James would ask me a question or we didn't know what to do, I would just say, just shoot Brad's face thinking about something. That'll get you. That's usually what we need. I mean, I love Brad Pitt, though not as much as I'm sure a lot of the people who will see this movie because they can't get enough of his face. But I'll tell you, it does work. He carries it off. Yeah.

One reviewer compared the story to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, also the basis, of course, for Apocalypse Now. Do you think that there are good parallels there? Yeah, I mean, I'd be lying if I didn't say that Apocalypse Now was one of the main inspirations for it in 2001. And it's pretty evident. But there's also elements of other myths, other movies, like lesser known movies like The Conformist, the Bertolucci movie, which is really great, which I think was an inspiration for Coppola to begin with, and the original text of Heart of Darkness, and then reading a lot of Joseph Campbell, and reading a lot of science and science fiction. I was more initially intrigued just by the science fiction of it all,

and the locations and things like that, And James, he always goes through everything through almost a filter of the main character, the protagonist and what the state of his soul is. So trying to put those two together was a lot of fun. I suppose we should say a little bit more about the plot without giving everything away. And it opens with this spectacular sequence where Brad Pitt literally becomes the man who fell to earth. And it kind of establishes who this guy is, or at least who he seems to be, right? Yeah. It establishes his bona fides as a space hero, as a man who is reaching for the stars. He's getting as high as he can, as a man who is reaching for the stars.

He's getting as high as he can, literally, on this international space antenna, which is part of the effort to contact and detect extraterrestrial life. In other drafts, it was like a space elevator and things like that. But that was, even though space elevators are things that have been, I'm sure you're aware of, contemplated and can be maybe even feasible,

something silly looking about it. Would you believe that just on last week's show, I talk, among other people, to a guy who wants to build one on the moon because it'll be so much easier to build there. No wind, no weather, and a lot less gravity. But anyway, yes, it does come up on this show now and then. Yeah. But anyway, yes, Wade does come up on this show now and then. Yeah. But anyway, he's on the space antenna and he falls to Earth, literally, which is a great way to show him being heroic.

He saves lives after this establishes the surge, which is these mysterious electrical bursts that have been coming from somewhere in our solar system. And he is led to believe that his father is responsible for it. And because he's his father's son, he has a unique ability to contact his father. And his father in return will accept the signal and they'll be able to trace his father's location and hopefully figure out where his father is, what he's up to and put an end to whatever his father's doing that threatens the stability of the solar system. That's pretty much the A story, as it's called. That's the main plot. And then the main thrust of the plot is Brad's emotional journey along the way. Yeah, there's no question that he goes through a lot of changes over the course of this story.

And as I said, he pulls it off. And along the way, he ends up on the moon for what I think is destined to become one of the great car chase scenes of all time. And then on to Mars and then far beyond with some great representations. I mean, for our folks who know these images when they see them,

wait until you see Jupiter, Saturn, and especially Neptune, folks. They're pretty spectacular. Yeah, and Mars is a beautiful-looking sequence. Some of it was actually imaged from actual footage from Mars, so NASA was able to give us that. That's truly beautiful. Apparently, we learned after the movie was finished, I wish we would have learned it beforehand. We might not have changed it anyway, but apparently Martian dusk isn't the color that we have it in there. It's not

orange, red. Apparently it's blue. But if we would have had it be blue, people would have thought it looked fake maybe because they're so used to everything being red. Mars looks like Mars to me and the moon sure looks like the moon. I mean, it may be a better cinematic representation of what the moon really looks like than I have seen anywhere ever. Yeah, I think the moon, that's a gorgeous sequence. And the way that James used a lot of great techniques that he and his cinematographer, Hoyta, devised.

He told me what they were. I cannot comprehend exactly what he did. That information is out there. And 2001 is, I think, probably the greatest movie ever made. But they got the surface of the moon wrong. It doesn't quite look that way. And that's the only thing that we can say, hey, we did it better than 2001. It's true. Yeah. And, you know, they have the excuse of when they were putting that film together, they didn't know any better. But obviously you guys did.

And I would agree with you about 2001. I don't know. Maybe The Wizard of Oz might be higher on my list. But it sure is one of my favorite films. on my list, but it sure is one of my favorite films. In 2001, there is eventually an interaction, a confrontation with some kind of alien intelligence. And that, in fact, there is a line, which I hesitate to give, here's one of those spoiler alerts, folks, which is so key to this film. And it's when Brad Pitt's character is confronting his father, who he hasn't seen for all these decades, and his father wants to keep up the work that he's been about, which is trying to find intelligence across the universe. And Brad Pitt says to him, yeah, dad, you know, you've done your work. And I think the

line is something like, we're all we've got. I'm sure you remember the line. Yeah. Personally, I don't believe that we're all we've got, just to look at it like that. I mean, I do believe that there is probably intelligent life out there. I don't know how exactly, one question I have, I don't know who can answer that, is how do you define intelligent life out there. I don't know how exactly, one question I have, I don't know who can answer that is how do you define intelligent life? Like anything, like a squirrel and above, like what is intelligent life? But another life might not think that we're intelligent life. They might overlook us or think that we're below a squirrel. But I do think in the universe, there's plenty of it. I don't know how much you've discussed in your work. All the time.

You there? Yeah. I mean, I do believe in the Drake equation, but I don't believe so much in the Fermi paradox or the great filter theory. I just don't think that makes much sense. I mean, it's much more likely that we just haven't been able to discover them. I mean, we've only known about... Shakespeare was the best writer ever to live, genius, but he didn't even know about the existence of dinosaurs. I mean, dinosaur bones, good point. And we don't know about what 70% of the universe is made of. And nor do I think we will be able to detect any kind of intelligent life for a long time. I'm hopeful that, and I think we must try. I think it's, I'm obsessed with it in a way. I'm obsessed with it in a way. But we defined the playing field as the reachable universe. And that's what, well, I don't want to give away any spoilers. I don't know when this is coming out.

Back to ad astro writer Ethan Gross in a minute. I know you folks. One reason you listen to planetary radio is the same as mine, because you love learning more about life, the universe, and everything. That's what The Great Courses Plus is dedicated to, making exciting education available to everyone. They make it possible to learn from the brightest minds out there, the very best professors most of us would never otherwise have access to.

It's college-level learning, but with no student loans or grades. And The Great Courses Plus app means you can learn whenever you like. As I mentioned last week, I'm deep into black holes, tides, and curved space-time. Accomplished physicist and professor Benjamin Schumacher is the kind of teacher we all wish we'd had throughout our educations. Want to join me? There are hundreds of courses to choose from, and the Great Courses Plus is still offering that great limited time offer to planetary radio listeners. A free month of unlimited access to their entire library. Start your free month today. Go to thegreatcoursesplus.com slash planetary.

That's thegreatcoursesplus.com slash planetary. See you on campus. All of what you've just said, I mean, part of our mission. Well, our boss, Bill Nye, the science guy, he says we were the planetary society. The audience is tired of hearing me say this, wants to answer two questions. Where do we come from and are we alone? And so we've spent a lot of our time looking for life across the universe and supporting people who do that. So it's good to hear you say that. Yeah. Also to bring up the Fermi paradox, that question that Enrico Fermi asked so many years ago, where is everybody?

How come we haven't heard from them? I've only half jokingly speculated that we may be in the middle of the intergalactic internet, except that they're using neutrinos to talk to each other, and we don't know how to do that yet. Yeah, exactly. I never understood why it was such a lasting mainstay in the argument. I mean, I guess it's just a thought exercise. Why haven't we discovered them? But why would they? That's like saying, because they're not calling us, talking to us, investigating us, they don't exist. I think we have to check our ego at the door. Maybe because they're intelligent, they're not calling us, talking to us, investigating us, they don't exist. I think we have to check our ego at the door. Maybe because they're intelligent, they're avoiding us.

Might be a wise move. Whether Brad Pitt's character is correct or not that we are alone, it's still important to the story, right? Because in a sense, he has to find his connection to other people rather than just looking for the next challenge out in the vacuum. That's my impression. Yeah. There's something that's expressed by Donald Sutherland's character, how he came to believe that sometimes people that are exploring and looking outward, they're doing that not so much for the knowledge and for the exploration, but they do it as a way to escape from themselves and from their things on earth that are important. And it's an expression of the ego in some ways. And so I'm all for exploration and finding out as much as possible, but I think we have to do it for the right reason. So the movie,

on the one hand, it's got some beautiful sequences of the great possibilities and technological wonders of space travel, but it shows also how it can be sort of corrupted with the human problems, with conglomerates and the military, space force type things. And we just have to be careful. We have to know why we're looking, not just for its own sake, not for vainglory. That's a big part of it. But I'm 100% for exploration. I think we need a backup drive for humanity. But what about humanity is worth backing up? What are the things that make us human? The love and the art and the beauty and the human connections. That's the stuff, not the, you know, Applebee's.

Yeah. And fast food outlets on the moon base. Yeah. Yeah. There are a lot of us who hope that with this next frontier, not to say the last frontier, that maybe we'll get it right this time. Maybe we'll do a better job. But, you know, that may be wishful thinking.

We're bound to take our humanity with us wherever we go. Yeah, that's right. The LP, the one that Carl Sagan, didn't he curate that was sent to? Oh, yeah. The Golden Record. The Golden Record or the LP, as I call it, because I don't have any retention for facts. That's the ideal. Just the greatest sounds of humanity.

Can you imagine if instead of that, he put on an ad for, I don't want to use Applebee's as a punching bag. He's not going to send up a coupon to Applebee's for free appetizer. That's perfectly okay with me, using Applebee's as an example. Food's not bad. Okay, I've never been there. No offense to anybody from the Apple Corporation. Yeah, and the thousand other examples that you could have used in that case. We think a lot of that golden record. In fact, I'm looking at the copy of it that's on my laptop right now. Of course, Carl Sagan was one of our founders at the Planetary Society. And the fact that he sent

the woman who would soon become his wife, that her heartbeat or her brainwaves actually went out into space. For all of our faults, it does seem that humanity has something to offer. We do get it right now and then. We absolutely get it right now and again. Yeah. Our flaws are, in a lot of ways, what make us human, what make us interesting, and what can make us beautiful. in a lot of ways, what make us human, what make us interesting, and what can make us beautiful. If we were perfect automatons, then we might as well just send out drones into space. And we should do that, but we also ultimately have to send out people, and people have to learn and

grow from what they experience and become better and smarter and more aware of what's out there and what's within them. That's a lot of what this movie tries to do. This movie, in some ways, it's not the rosiest picture of space and of the future because of some of the violence and the other forces out there at play that Brad has to navigate through. The movie is not a glorification of the space program or space exploration.

It doesn't sugarcoat how hard it is. In fact, the ad astra part is from the Latin phrase ad astra per aspera. And ad astra means to the stars, which is great and exciting. The movie pretty much focuses more on the per aspera part, which means with difficulties or through hardships. Clearly, the difficulties in mounting any kind of space program are numerous, whether it's just a simple question of getting enough funding and getting enough interest maintained to the big problems. And then the movie has the more cinematic problems of space, of moon pirates and other things that you'll see. But some of the less cinematic things are just the long distances

that will drive a person crazy or most people crazy in a small ship. The time needed to travel from A to B. The radiation, we still don't know exactly how. We have ideas, but how to shield against radiation. The complex calculations that have to be considered. Mars has to be in the right place at the right time. And so it's really, it boggles the mind to think about all the problems, but to me, there's no more noble science. Well, I guess there are more than one.

It's up there. It's up there. It's really up there, but I think we can chew gum and walk and travel to the moon at the same time. In fact, Brad Pitt, his character in some scenes and shots, you'll see him chewing gum. So we can do more than one thing at a time. We can work on all our terrestrial problems. And oftentimes when you work on the other problems, it advances us terrestrially too. GPS and other things that have been created because of of space technology yeah and our question stanley kubrick had arthur c clark you know helping him to do 2001 and he was a genius uh well they both were geniuses and james has me so and clark created the infrastructure

that allowed the gps to exist and i i can I can barely get my GPS to work. So. Well, you're comparing yourself to at least a demigod, if not a god. So we all kind of pale compared to the likes of Arthur C. Clarke. Yeah. And I love the quote that I think about a lot and James and I discuss a lot is, I think it's Arthur C. Clarke who said, either there is life out there or there isn't life out there. Either proposition is equally terrifying. I used to agree with that, but the more I think about it, I think it's more terrifying if we're alone. It just puts more pressure on us to get it right here and to honor and respect and appreciate what we have here. Let me say that you're in good company because Clark was a guest

of mine on the show at least a couple of times and was just as amazing to talk to as you might have guessed. Did he think if he had to come onto the fence one side or the other, did he think that there is intelligent life in the universe? You know, I don't know if I ever asked him flat out. I'm sure other people must have. I think he, I'm almost certain that he would have said what other people have said, which is that if there isn't, it seems like a colossal waste of space. Right. And that's from cosmos. I'm from, uh, uh, contacts, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He was a marvelous character. Just had a wonderful time talking with him. You know, he wasn't afraid to go into the unknown out at the bleeding edge of science and even a little bit beyond it sometimes. I want to bring it back down to, well, I was going to say to Earth, into it, but we are talking, you and I are conversing on September 19th. Did you know that this is International Talk Like a Pirate Day?

Who doesn't? My mom woke me up early this morning and said, ahoy ye matey. No, tell me about it. Every day has, is this one of those things that you can just like pay $10 to a registry and get your day named after anything you want? I suspect. Yeah. I'm not going to talk like a pirate. And I think I'm self-conscious enough about how I speak without it. Well, you're pirates. We don't hear from them, but they do make their presence known. It's in that scene, terrific car chase actually on the moon, as I said, and Donald Sutherland is in it. You mentioned him and I can never get enough Donald Sutherland is in it. You mentioned him

and I can never get enough Donald Sutherland. I'm sorry he didn't make it further into the movie. I won't say what happens. But I also want to mention Tommy Lee Jones because he is always a marvel to watch. And I don't think anybody else could have pulled off his part as well. Oh yeah. He's just got so much gravity to him. No pun intended. He's great. And I visited the set quite a lot. And I talked to Donald Sutherland a lot and he's beautiful to talk to, but I was too intimidated to even approach Tommy Lee Jones. I don't know. That's probably my own issues. Yeah. He's one of my favorite things in the movie. Mine too. I've talked to a lot of people who've made or worked on science fiction films, and even the ones that are often identified as having the best science, the most realistic science, like Interstellar, which I've talked with Kip Thorne

about. Kip Thorne, the Caltech physicist who helped produce that film as well as helped to write it, he says that, yeah, when know, when it comes right down to it, in that film, they stuck very close to the science, but there were places where the director said, nope, nope, we're going to go in a different direction here because the story requires it. That certainly seems true here. I mean, there are certain things that are kind of far-fetched,

including the sort of central premise, the reason that McBride, Brad Pitt's character, ends up heading across the solar system to meet his dad. I don't know about the premise being far-fetched in terms of we tried to keep it vague enough about what was happening and mysterious enough with what Tommy Lee Jones' character is doing to elicit such a response to figure out what he's doing and to stop it. Some of the things, I know that the rings around planets aren't as tightly packed with rocks as they're shown. Apparently, you can go through them without being in danger of hitting them. But some of the things just work better cinematically.

Some of the things, we tried to keep things vague in terms of the means of propulsion, how long it would take to get to Neptune or wherever. When you say the central premise is far-fetched, are you talking about in Sunlight, the Danny Boyle movie also? Because that was one thing that I thought was funny when one of the commentators on IMDb,

there's a goof section. Under the goofs, there was the premise, which I thought was funny when one of the commentators on IMDb, there's like a goof section. Under the goofs, there was like the premise, which I thought was funny. Oh. But without the premise, there's no movie. Exactly. I mean, this happened with The Martian as well. And in the book, The Martian, because Andy Weir admits right up front, hey, you know, there's never going to be a windstorm on Mars

that could rip off an antenna and impale your lead character. The wind is fast, but there just isn't much of it. But he knew he had to do that because he had to get the Martian to be by himself, to have all planet to himself. There's a little bit of that here, I think, in that this thing that is happening in the outreaches of the solar system that's affecting Earth, it's very hard to imagine any kind of science that could pull that off. But if you didn't have the threat to Earth, why would anybody be headed out there to put a stop

to it? Right. I know we do mention antimatter, which to me is almost a science fiction placeholder of the science. Yeah. And the premise was to a large part inspired by some of the, when we were developing the bomb during World War II, some people feared that splitting the atom could incinerate much of the atmosphere across much of America. That was a minority view and obviously it was incorrect, but that was one of the fears that once you unlock that power of the atom, it would cause a chain reaction. So this was, we did that on a more celestial level here with this. Yeah. It's I'll leave it as being highly speculative. How's that? Of course. No. And part of the fun, everybody should see it and then make up a list of the science no-nos, But I look at it as,

you know, it's more, it's not supposed to be 100% realistic because then there wouldn't be a movie. It would be, I mean, there's so many great science documentaries out there for all mankind. I could watch that movie every year. It's more, this is more of a poetic, sumptuous experience

and it's not to be taken literally. A poetic, sumptuous experience. I think that's a great description of the film. And I do recommend that everybody see it, especially space geeks, even if you may want to make that list, even that you've mentioned. We can share about people's lists later on, but- Yeah, I have my own list. I'll share one of these days. But I think- I'd, yeah. Cause you know what? I I'm an extra on the shuttle that goes from the earth to the moon.

Yeah. And I think that's highly unrealistic. That's my biggest, I would never, they would never let me on there. You wouldn't go. I wouldn't. No,

I don't think so. I don't, unless I got to bring my dogs. Can I have your seat? Yeah, absolutely. I, I, now I got to see the film a second time. Cause I got your seat? Yeah, absolutely. Now I've got to see the film a second time because I've got to find you in that scene.

Yeah, and also in the previous scene in which Brad's getting ready to go onto the... In the room that is taken almost right out of one of those Norman Rockwell paintings of the Apollo astronauts getting ready,

having their spacesuit put on. I don't know if you've seen that Norman Rockwell painting. I think it's Neil Armstrong, but it's just, you guys really pulled it off there. And I also like that poor Brad Pitt, when he wants a blanket and a pillow on his Virgin Galactic or Virgin flight to the moon, they're going to charge him 125 bucks. Yes. You know, but you need your pillow. You can float up from behind your head and you'll lose it. You need something, pillow, zero gravity volleyball or something. Well, that's, you know, Haywood Floyd, when he was on his way, was it to the moon or just up to the space station, he falls asleep and they still call them stewardesses. Then the flight attendant has to grab his pen that's floated away. There are a lot of little things

that could, whether they were intentional or not, they sure seem like nice little tributes to some of the great science fiction films of the past. I got one other question for you along those lines. There is a scene on Mars, there are a couple of scenes actually, where McBride, Brad Pitt's character, he's in a room that's referred to at one point as a comfort room. Yeah. And all of the walls are giant screens and it's as if he was in a different place. It's almost virtual reality, but not quite. Was that inspired by anything? I'm thinking of a certain Ray Bradbury story called The Veldt. It might have been.

In the script, it was just described as a kind of a blank room. It was just supposed to be a room for almost ironic because it wasn't really that comfortable. It was just for him to settle down after the experience that he just experienced, like a waiting room. And I haven't read The Veldt, but now I have to. But all that stuff, those great images were put in afterwards. And to me, that would make me even less comfortable the way they were. They were huge. It does work that way. It actually does. If somebody had the idea that this would be comforting to see these giant images of nature, but they're kind of pale and they really are unsettling. Yeah.

And it would just make you miss it more in a way. And I'd feel lonelier. I would just rather just have for a comfort room, just a nice recliner and some dogs. Someone asked me what my comfort room is. And I would just say, I used to say any room that I could bring my dogs, they just make things more comfortable. In fact, I had to leave the room because my dogs were just making too much of a ruckus. So that's why I might sound a little uncomfortable right now.

They're not near me. But I'll read the VELT. You should. Yeah. It's a great disturbing story. It is a reassuring human quality that you are that close to another species. I feel the same way about my dog. Yeah, they're the best.

I mean, there is a dog on Mars in one of the sequences. That's right. Yes, I forgot about that. Yeah. I would just like to be the dog handler there. That's what I would do. I still feel bad about Laika, though. Oh, yeah.

She's one of the, I think it's a she, one of the unspoken heroes of space. True martyr. I agree. I agree. Unwitting, maybe, but yeah, she was. Yeah. Can you still be a hero if you don't know you're being a hero? Probably not.

That is an excellent question. Maybe one to consider for another time when we talk more about astronauts and the right stuff and, and maybe even more about Ad Astra. I've enjoyed this enormously, Ethan. Thank you so much. And, and thank you for your work on this great film and earlier on fringe, because I was a big fan.

Thank you so much for your, your thoughtfulness and your time. Producer and writer, Ethan Gross, the co-writer with director James Gray of Ad Astra. Go see it. Tell me what you think. What's up with Bruce Betts is moments away this week, including your chance to win a pretty terrific prize.

Man, am I glad I'm no longer in charge of hiring people for the university I once worked for. It wasn't just the weeks it often took to fill a position, but the difficulty in finding great candidates. I hear things haven't changed much except for the appearance of LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the best place to post your job openings. The best candidates will provide you with all the information you'll want even before you contact them. And once the process starts, LinkedIn gives you the tools to manage it right through shaking hands with your new employee. Your job post will reach the people you want to hire. After all, somebody fills a

position every eight seconds on LinkedIn. Find the right person for your business today with LinkedIn Jobs. You can pay what you want, and the first $50 is on them. Just visit linkedin.com slash planetary. Again, that's linkedin.com slash planetary to get $50 off your first job post. Terms and conditions apply. Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. We are in the Planetary Society studios. Magnificent, aren't they? In Pasadena, California.

Plural? Not really. With the chief scientist, Bruce Betts. He's sitting across the table from me. Welcome. It's glorious. They're glorious surroundings. It's hard to think. I just feel a sense of nobility. And today, a special prop, a special animated prop, a globe that we will be talking about in minutes because we're going to offer one of these as a prize. First, please tell us what's hanging above that globe. What's hanging above that globe is the moon passing by a number of planets in the evening sky in the south. You can check out Jupiter looking like the brightest star-like object in the low in the south. You can check out Jupiter looking like the brightest star-like object in the low in the southwest and the crescent moon will be nearby on October 3rd. And then a couple nights later on October 5th, Saturn will be hanging out near the moon looking yellowish.

And if you can get a really low view to the horizon, I mean low view to the western horizon. Shortly after sunset, you may be able to pick up a very, very young moon and Mercury. Mercury making an appearance very low in the west, far to the lower right of Jupiter. So really low angle, will it help if I lie down on the ground? Yes, clearly that no, no. In fact, the higher you can get, literally or figuratively, the more likely you will see Mercury and a young moon. That's great. Move on to this week in space history. It was this week in 1958 that a little organization called NASA was founded. Yeah, remember that acronym because it's going to come up. Yes, remember NASA.

We move on to Random Space Fact. How dignified. Noble, I thought. Interestingly, on the asteroid Ryugu that is currently being explored by Hayabusa2. All of the features are to be named based on names in stories and fairy tales for children. So they name things after characters in children's stories. Kind of cool. I didn't know that.

Does Pokemon count? Well, of course. All right. We're ready for this contest. And I was worried about this contest. As I told you, I thought we might only get two or three entries. It picked up toward the end of the contest period. And so we did okay. But remind people, what were we about? It was challenging and came up with it on the fly based upon a listener's input, but we got some good entries. So here was what we said. Create and share with us your third order acronym that is related to space. A third order acronym is an acronym containing

an acronym that contains, you guessed it, an acronym. Your acronym, we told you, could be deadly serious or make us laugh. And we got both. Tell us more about how we did, Matt. We got serious ones. I mean, real ones. And there were so many good ones. Really, everybody deserves a prize or a mention.

We'll mention a few, but we're going to have two winners, one for a fake third-order acronym and one for a real one, as it turns out, which was just too good to pass up. So the first of these, this is not a prize winner, but I like it. From Chris Garland, recent winner in Phoenix, Abracadabra, a broadband resonant approach to cosmic axion detection with an amplifying B-field ring apparatus. I think it's fake. Wow. I'm guessing, but that's pretty cool. It's actually not a nested or a third order acronym, but still.

Well, then we're throwing it out. But still, you got it. We're throwing it out. Perry Metzger in New York, New York makes up for it because his is SPACE, which stands for Space Podcast Acronym Contest Entry. But cleverly, SPACE is recursive. Within that acronym, SPACE also stands for the same thing. And so it's an nth order acronym. Wow. That kind of hurt.

He blew your mind, didn't he? Ow. All right. Here's one from Mel Powell in Sherman Oaks, California. He says it's a Fifth Order acronym. But what he really means is that it represents five different things. Five principal ISS, or International Space Station Agen agencies, NASA, JAXA, ESA, Roscosmos, and the CSA. NJERC, N-J-E-R-C.

NJERC. I've known some people who are NJERCs. Here's a real one from Devin O'Rourke in Lakewood, Colorado. Here's a real one from Devin O'Rourke in Lakewood, Colorado. It's NUTI, N-U-T-I, which is the NASCOM user traffic interface. NASCOM stands for NASA Communications. And NASA, he says, well, you know what that stands for. Yes, I'm sure we do. The first of our winners. This came from Jordan Tickton, who is an intern at JPL. He actually was part of the LightSail 2 team when he was at Cal Poly. I think he's still at Cal Poly. It's EGLE, ESPA or ESPA Augmented Geostationary Laboratory Experiment.

Within that, ESPA is EELV secondary payload adapter. And then EELV, of course, is evolved expendable launch vehicle. He says, full disclosure, I polled the JPL Slack community to mine for a real one. Thank you, Spencer Backus. to mine for a real one. Thank you, Spencer Backus. You know what happened here? All the resources of JPL went to work to find a third order acronym for Jordan Tickton. I figure we'd probably set back the Europa Clipper mission by three, four hours. Oh my gosh, the guilt. Now this was totally worthwhile. They'll be more productive going forward having satisfied this. And finally, this fake one from Darren Ritchie. Thelonious. Testing human endurance limits of NEEMO, which is the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operation and contains NASA, of course.

Testing human endurance limits of NEEMO interior underwhelming spaciousness. Thelonious. Well, yeah, they do have underwhelming spaciousness down on the ocean floor. NEEMO, NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operation. We've talked to people, of course, on NEEMO missions while they were underwater on this program. Fun stuff. Fun stuff. Bloop, bloop.

So our two winners, Jordan and Darren, we're going to send both of you Planetary Radio t-shirts. And if iTelescope is up for this, I think they are, itelescope.net accounts. Well, thank you, all of those of you who worked so hard on that one. Give you something that's probably a little bit easier. It's time once again to play Where in the Solar System? And your question this time is, where in the solar system is the crater Hamlet? Ooh, Hamlet.

Like, you know, the Shakespearean play. Or a small cutlet of ham. Go to planetary.org slash radio contest to get us your entry. To impact or not to impact? That is the question. So here's the deal. I told you we have something special this week. It's sitting and rotating in front of us right now.

Do you want to describe this? rotating in front of us right now. Do you want to describe this? So it is an Earth globe that on the outside of the clear plastic has a lovely representation of LightSail 2. And then the Earth globe is rotating, just hanging out, rotating on its own inside, and it's on a lovely stand with the Planetary Society logo. It is gorgeous as well.

This is from our good friends at MOVA. It is a limited edition design that is only available for a few more days. You can learn more about it. You can even order one at movaglobes.com slash lightsail2. And $50 of each sale of one of these comes back to the Planetary Society, which is why we're talking about it. But MOVA has donated one of these for us to give away on the show. So you might get one for free. It, as Bruce said, features light sail 2 on the outer shell and it rotates using light and Earth's magnetic field. So it's a lot like LightSail 2.

It is. It's a lot like LightSail 2. Maybe we can get one of these launched. I doubt. Probably not. It's super cool. You've got until Wednesday, October 2nd, to get us the answer this time around. Wednesday, October 2nd at 8 a.m. Pacific time.

And we'll throw in an itelescope.net astronomy account on that worldwide network of telescopes. All right, everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky, and think about making your name into an acronym. What would it be? Thank you, and good night. I am so glad you mentioned that, because here is Devin O'Rourke's entry. Matt always transmits killer, awesome planetary lessons and news. Matt Kaplan. Mr. Audio Time.

Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by its mythic members. Help us create that myth. Join the society at planetary.org slash membership. Mark Hilverda is our associate producer. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which was arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. I'm Matt Kaplan, Ad Astra.