Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Advocating for Planetary Science/Star Trek Meets Spacefarers

Episode Date: May 20, 2013

The director and cast of Star Trek: Into Darkness meet up with real space travelers. Also: Planetary science funding from NASA is in trouble, so a delegation led by Bill Nye the Science Guy descended on Washington DC last week to sound the alarm. Planetary Society Advocacy chief Casey Dreier provides a report, and comments on the Society’s support for NASA’s Asteroid Retrieval Mission. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi there, dear podcast listeners. It's Matt, your friendly host, with a request, but a really special request, not one that we've done in the past. Some of you may know that in 2011, Planetary Radio won the coveted Parsec Award, and as you're about to hear, these are awards that are given out for podcasts that are related to speculative fiction, science, fantasy. Anyway, they're done at the Dragon Con Awards each year in Atlanta, and we won in 2011. And that was much to the chagrin, I think, of some very worthy nominees in our category, because they do have this one category for the facts behind the fiction. That's the one that we took. Well, we skipped this year, or last year, I should say, but we've received a

promo that the Parsec people are asking past winners to run. And, of course, I'm doing this for only the most selfish reasons, because I'm hoping that one or two of you out there might just decide to nominate Planetary Radio once again. I wouldn't mind going back to Dragon Con to go up there on stage and pick up an award on your behalf, of course. Anyway, here's the promo. an award on your behalf, of course. Anyway, here's the promo. The Parsec Awards, those strange and compelling trophies for speculative fiction podcasting, came to earth in 2006 with powers and abilities far beyond those of normal awards. The Parsec Awards have been known to make you a better podcaster, so you can stand straighter, walk

taller, and stop taking separate bubble baths in front of sunsets. So what would you pay for such an opportunity? Don't answer yet. Act now and nominate a podcast before May 27th, and you too can help a deserving podcaster turn his or her life around and win a Parsec Award. Go to parsecawards.com and nominate a deserving podcaster. Act now. Operators are standing by.

So that's it. Thanks very much, and wish us luck. Here's Planetary Radio. Star Trek goes to the real space station, and saving planetary science, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome to the travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. We've got another packed show for you today. It includes advocacy and outreach strategist Casey Dreyer of the Planetary Society.

But we'll also hear cast members of Star Trek Into Darkness includes advocacy and outreach strategist Casey Dreyer of the Planetary Society. But we'll also hear cast members of Star Trek Into Darkness talking with real space trekkers. Bill Nye is off this week, but planetary evangelist Emily Lakdawalla is ready to check in via Skype. Emily, glad you could join us again before you set out for a busy week on the road. What should we talk about? I think you're going to be writing maybe by the time people see this about those rovers up on Mars. Yeah, I've started writing. Hopefully I'll post it on Monday. I'm talking finally about Curiosity and Opportunity doing what rovers should be doing, which is to say roving.

Curiosity in particular has been parked for more than three months, so it's delightful to finally see the odometer tick up a little bit that didn't move very far, just a couple of meters, in order to get to a second drill site where they're going to try to corroborate the findings they made at their very first drill site. Still, it's a relief to see the rover moving again. Now, do you accept the science decision

that kept this in one place for so long, or is that frustration I hear genuine? I absolutely accept that there is a scientific reason to be staying here. However, this thing is a gigantic laboratory with wheels, and they ought to be using them. It's interesting to chat with people who have worked on Mars rovers before, other Mars rovers, all three other Mars rovers, and everybody's, I think, a little bit surprised at how slow Curiosity has been moving. Now, to make the other side of the argument, Curiosity is by far the most complicated laboratory that has ever been sent to the surface of another planet, and it has wheels. So just operating it is very complicated. Not everything

can be used in the same day. There are a lot of trade-offs to whether they move or not, and these are very interesting rocks for them to explore. All of that being said, I'm going to be very glad when they hit the road and start heading south toward the mountain, which they hopefully will do before too very much longer. All right, let's talk about that little machine elsewhere on Mars, which has been moving along. In fact, IRED has set a record. Absolutely. Opportunity showing how rovers should do it. Opportunity spent quite a while exploring Cape York, which is the part of the Rim of Endeavor crater where Opportunity made landfall after the many kilometers of driving across the trackless wastes of Meridiani Planum. and clays, some of the oldest rocks and minerals ever observed on Mars, and just finished up doing some work there and has hit the road, gone I think by now more than 300 meters south, heading for Solander Point. Opportunity has to get there before August in order to have a nice

place to do some winter science while still being able to point those solar panels toward the northern sun as the sun heads north for their winter. So they do have a ticking clock, unlike Curiosity, Opportunity Solar Power, and does depend on being able to tilt toward the sun during the winter. So they've got to get that rover moving, and they're doing a great job. All right, Emily, in the few seconds we have left, where exactly will you be this coming week as people hear the show? I'll be in Big Bear on Thursday morning talking about how people can improve their presentations. An interesting thing to do before people hear the show. I'll be in Big Bear on Thursday morning talking about how people can improve their presentations, an interesting thing to do before people give the rest of their

presentations during the week. And then in the weekend, I'll be at Tucson talking at Space Fest, the fifth Space Fest, which is always a fun meeting involving lots of space artists and lots of active space researchers. So it's going to be enjoyable. Have a great time. And here's to better and better presentations at these meetings that we go to. Thanks, Emily. Thank you. She is the senior editor for the Planetary Society and our planetary evangelist and a contributing editor to Sky and Telescope magazine.

That's Emily. Some pretend space travelers got to speak to the real thing last week. NASA broadcast members from the new Star Trek movie, Into Darkness, together with several astronauts. We've got a few highlights for you in case you missed the webcast, beginning with this question from Star Trek director J.J. Abrams for former International Space Station commander Mike Fink. I talked to an astronaut once who told me that on one of his missions, he actually did see something that was very strange that he couldn't explain that actually made him believe in extraterrestrial life.

And my question to you is have either of you ever seen anything that made you believe that or something that you couldn't explain, couldn't understand, that you didn't really necessarily report to the public but that you want to share with us now. Thanks. That was a great question from JJ. We get that question a lot. We all want to know, are we the only ones out there? And Star Trek helps us imagine what it could be like if there were other creatures out

there, other people, other species. So I spent a whole year up in space, 381 days but it was only 240 miles up so that's not very far in cosmic terms so we think as we go farther out into the universe we might find something out there that we don't know about I've never seen anything maybe Chell will on his mission

but I think that as we go farther out, with the inspiration that we get from you guys making these great feats of imagination and excitement, the movies that you make, inspire us to be our best as human beings on planet Earth. A bit later, Chris Pine, a.k.a. Captain James T. Kirk, had this question for Chris Cassidy, a current flight engineer on the ISS. Cassidy had just described how a spacewalk was needed to repair the station's ammonia leak a couple of weeks ago. Are you guys prepared for, are you trained to deal with all sorts of complications like when you're on the ground here training?

Are you trained for that specifically or are you just trained to be generally handy with space equipment? You laugh, but that's a very good trade. I think it's very helpful to be a garage tinker kind of a person if you're going to come up here on the space station because that's what we do all day long is turn bolts and assemble things and fix broken equipment. It's hard to train specifically for that kind of stuff on the ground because how do you know what's going to break? Which widget? You really don't. You just have to kind of have a generic sense of how things should run and fix stuff that's broken. And we have a really smart ground team that sends up

procedures with real nice steps and pictures and just so that you and I can do procedures like that. What we do train specifically for is emergencies, but the big ones are a fire, a depressurization if some meteorite came and smacked a hole and we started losing air pressure, or we have the ammonia that we just talked about. If it leaked inside into the cabin, then that's a big problem too. So those are kind of our three big emergencies that we train for over and over. This is John Cho. I play play Sulu and just because I cannot believe this is real would you mind taking your hands off the microphone

putting them behind your head and saying look ma no hands That's amazing. Oh, my God. Unbelievable. Oh, no, go back to Chris. Unbelievable. Chris is hanging out like that in space. You can't drop the mic in space. I think it's what we just learned. J.J. Abrams, Chris Pine, and John Cho, along with Into Darkness cast member Alice Eve, talking with astronauts Mike Fink and Chris Cassidy last week.

We'll talk with Casey Dreyer about saving planetary science when Planetary Radio returns. Make it so. Hey, hey, Bill Nye here, CEO of the Planetary Society, speaking to you from PlanetFest 2012, the celebration of the Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity landing on the surface of Mars. This is taking us our next steps in following the water

and the search for life, to understand those two deep questions. Where did we come from, and are we alone? This is the most exciting thing that people do, and together we can advocate for planetary science and, dare I say it, change the worlds. Hi, this is Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society. We've spent the last year creating an informative, exciting, and beautiful new website. Your place in space is now open for

business. You'll find a whole new look with lots of images, great stories, my popular blog, and new blogs from my colleagues and expert guests. And as the world becomes more social, we are too, giving you the opportunity to join in through Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and much more. It's all at planetary.org. I hope you'll check it out. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. Casey Dreyer is the Planetary Society's advocacy and outreach strategist. That's why he spends a good deal of time in Washington, D.C., helping elected officials and their staffs understand the value of planetary science. Last week, Casey was joined in the Capitol by Society CEO Bill Nye, Emily Lakdawalla, and others. I sat down with him right after he returned to Pasadena.

Casey, the first thing I want to talk to you about, well, I'll welcome you back first because it hasn't been that many days since you came back from this huge trip to D.C. with a bunch of our colleagues. I'm intrigued by this blog entry that apparently you posted while you were in the nation's capital. NASA robs planetary science. Them's fighting words. They are fighting words because it's something to fight about. What we're talking about here, these are all repercussions and echoes of what happened for last year's budget. So this has nothing to do with actually why we were in D.C. this time, which was to talk about budget for next year, for 2014.

2013 budget, we had a great outcome, ultimately. Congress restored or essentially rejected the proposed cut to planetary science at NASA. Hundreds of millions of dollars more back to the program, money for Europa mission, money for smaller missions, more money for to go to Mars in 2020. It was really, we were very happy with it. And so then what happens is that Congress passes this money and they pass the law and give NASA this money. Then NASA has to do this thing called the operating plan. So they say, okay, Congress just gave us this money. Now what's the exact way we're going to spend it? And so what happened was, and what we think is going to happen, is that NASA is going

to take that money that Congress gave them for planetary science and use it for other programs, essentially dipping into the pot for planetary science to support their other priorities and to bring planetary science way back below to where they had it proposed to cut. What's the evidence, the basis for these fears? Well, this thing called the operating plan, it was leaked, or we think it was leaked out to some people in the planetary science community, and they posted it online just a few days ago. And in that post, they say that this all but $3 million of the

$220 million that came back to planetary science was taken away from planetary science. So it was a really dastardly thing to do. And that's what I mean. They're essentially doing a reverse Robin Hood here. They're stealing from the poor planetary science to give to other richer programs. And I should emphasize, we don't know exactly what programs this money is going to. We only have a partial leak of this information. But this is all wrapped up in things like the sequester and other issues that are driving NASA to say they're propping up their most high-priority programs, of which clearly planetary science is not.

Apparently not. And we should also say, now this, what we've seen, this is not the final operating plan. This may be a draft. Yeah. Congress hasn't technically seen the final operating plan as we record this. It was supposed to have come out today on Friday, the 17th of May, but we haven't seen, and the actual operating plan itself is not a public document. So even when it comes out, no one's really outside the government supposed to know what's in it. So there's a couple layers of confusion and obfuscation here that we're trying to see through. We have people in Congress who know about this.

They are very upset about it. And they are waiting until they get the official document. Congress can theoretically work to reject it or tell NASA that they don't like it. There's ultimately only so much they can do because there are a lot of other Congress people going back and forth with what priorities they want funded. Congress has still a chance to stop this, and it's kind of up to them and to NASA how much they want to work this out.

And weren't there already some Congress people, and I think a senator or two, who have gone on the record and said, don't mess with this? Yeah, a few weeks ago, Adam Schiff from California, Dianne Feinstein from California, Barbara Boxer from California, and John Culberson of Texas all wrote a letter to Charles Bolden, the NASA administrator, saying don't do exactly what we just saw they did. So they had clearly gotten hints that this may have been coming. And this is what's really actually kind of stunning to me. Despite this clear warning and this clear desire of Congress that undid these really big cuts, it was a major step that Congress did this. And then also with this letter telling Charles Bolden,

hey, don't use this money for what we didn't give you it for. But they did it anyway. I mean, it's don't use this money for what we didn't give you it for. But they did it anyway. I mean, that's really, I mean, it's highly unusual that this happens. And so we're in this really unique situation, I think, at the space program where NASA does not itself seem to see the value of planetary science. And we clearly have evidence of this now. The administration is not seeing the value of planetary science, but Congress clearly sees the value of planetary science.

And they're right now our best allies in this fight to restore funding. It's fascinating, especially after we saw that wild enthusiasm, which we certainly know that NASA officials enjoyed and witnessed, because some of them were right here with us at PlanetFest, when the Mars Science Laboratory touched down on Mars. I mean, they see the science. They see how exciting it is to people, the enthusiasm that it generates. And yet it's still taken, boy, even say in a backseat, it's more on the trunk than the backseat.

Yeah, they toss it. That's the truly stunning thing, and that's what we keep trying to tell people at NASA, is that this is the most visible and successful program that you have going on right now. People didn't gather in Times Square for an earth science program or a heliophysics program or even for the ISS and not to diminish any of those programs. They gathered in Times Square to see Curiosity land on Mars. programs. They gathered in Times Square to see Curiosity land on Mars. The Curiosity lander was part of the inauguration parade, along with Orion. Those are the only two representations of NASA. And so, I mean, there's a fundamental disconnect between the public support of planetary science

and now clearly even NASA's support of planetary science. And we really hope they change their minds here in the future. Are you going to continue to write about this? Oh, yes, absolutely. Everyone who's listening can read updates on this issue, which will have to kind of wait until the official operating plan does come to Congress. But also we've been doing a lot of work in D.C. lately to deal with next year's budget, which, as we all know, is very similar to the

proposal last year. It continues the cuts. And clearly, NASA itself is now very committed to these cuts. And so we have a lot going on. Bill Nye, myself, our COO, Jen Vaughn, and other staff members from the Society were all in D.C. last week. We had Babak Ferdowsi, better known as Mohawk Guy, join us in D.C. as we spoke to Congress, had special events in the Capitol building to raise awareness of this issue and this program. And it was a big week, so you'll be seeing a lot more information on our blogs. And where do people find that if they want to learn more? That's at planetary.org slash SOS. We'll take you to all of the information and also give you

background on the current issues with the budget at Planetary Science. All right, SOS, as in Save Our Science. As in Save Our Science. With just a minute or so left, I wanted to see if you could say something about this press release that the Planetary Society put out on the same day that your blog entry came out, and that is the Planetary Society announces conditional support of NASA's asteroid mission. This is the asteroid retrieval mission that a lot of us have heard about?

Yeah, this is the mission to grab a small asteroid from the asteroid belt and move it into orbit around the moon or nearby the moon. And then later for astronauts to go out to that asteroid and take samples and do research and really use the capabilities they're building with the SLS and Orion to their full potential. That's a great concept. It's exciting. I fundamentally personally like it because instead of sitting here just watching how objects in the sky move, which is essentially what we've done since all of human history, we're going to take the first step into really taking control over our solar system

or having an influence on it and being able to move even something small. It's still philosophically, we're moving something that's been in orbit around the sun to a different orbit based on our own desires, which is a very cool idea. I think it could look very great for astronauts to go beyond low Earth orbit, go out near the moon, You have the moon orbiting beneath you while you're hacking away at an asteroid. That would be a lot of fun. However, it's conditional because when NASA announced this mission, they said we want $100 million this year for it to start studying it, and then next year.

And we said, what was that? And they said, oh, you know, we'll figure it out. So NASA doesn't have any long-term cost projections for this plan, and they don't even know where the money is going to come from. And so we're concerned, and what we're, again, conditional our support is on, is that this money does not come from NASA's science programs. NASA science supports planetary science, heliophysics, astronomy, all the other robotic missions that NASA does and does so well.

We want both of these to happen. We primarily support planetary science here at the Society, but we want a great mission to happen for humans to go to and for really pushing robotic and technological understanding and capabilities. So it's a big question. And so, again, NASA's going to be doing more work on this this year, so we'll really know how much it's going to cost and how they're going to do it, and we'll see whether that support continues.

So we'll put up a link to this press release as well for anybody who wants to take a look at where the Planetary Society stands on this mission, asteroid retrieval. It is another topic that I'm sure we will continue to talk about on this program. And, you know, it's unfortunate but inevitable that it always comes back to dollars. When there aren't enough of them, that's always the inevitable end result. And when are there enough? But we're not asking for the moon. Well, no, just Mars and places beyond that.

Well, right now we're asking for a small asteroid, I think. And I like that. I started thinking, okay, I hadn't thought of it the way you put it a moment ago, that this is the beginning of us taking command, actually doing what needs to be done in the solar system. So today, moving a small asteroid. Tomorrow, deflecting a giant one. And then maybe the week after that we terraform Mars.

There you go. Probably two weeks. Thank you, Casey. Happy to be here, Matt. Casey Dreyer handles advocacy for the Planetary Society, and as you heard, you can read his stuff. He's got a blog section at planetary.org, but if you want to follow what's happening and the efforts by the Society to rescue planetary science, the exploration of our solar system.

You can find that at planetary.org. I'll be right back with Bruce Betts in this week's edition of What's Up. Here we are at Planetary Society HQ with the Director of Projects, Dr. Bruce Betts. It's time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. Hi, good to be sitting across from you. Hi, and it's pretty okay to be sitting across from you too, Matt. Wild enthusiasm. Woo-hoo! Takes over.

Let's hear about the night sky, and then we've got other really fun stuff. How exciting. What a tease. Well, the night sky is exciting. This coming couple weeks here, particularly within the next week, if you can get a view low in the west shortly after sunset, I strongly recommend it. Because it's a three-planet party, Matt. A three-planet party. We've got Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury all getting really close.

They're in a really tight triangle on the 26th, on May 26th. But any time in the next week or two, they're shifting around. So early in the week, Jupiter's highest and Mercury's lowest, Venus in between. But then they get all scrambly and things change. But Venus is the brightest, then Jupiter, and then Mercury's much dimmer. But you really have to look low in the west soon after sunset. A cosmic love triangle. Yes, and I'm sure there's some type of mythological connection as well.

Yeah, and Saturn, not really party heavy, at least right at this point. So Saturn's up, but other side of the sky, over in the east in the early evening. East, southeast, looking kind of yellowish and kind of jealous that it wasn't invited to the party. All right, we move on to this week in space history. Hard to believe it, but it was indeed five years ago this week that Phoenix landed on Mars and had a very successful mission. Yeah, short but productive. And delivered.

The Planetary Society provided Visions of Mars CD with a quarter million names of people and some Mars art, science, science fiction greetings all sitting there ready for astronauts to come play with it. Yep, I'm up there. Are you up there? I'm up there. I'm up there in more ways than you can imagine. I don't even know what that means. So I hear we've got something special coming up next.

Yeah, we do. We have a celebrity random space fact introduction. Excellent. Here she is. Hey, Bruce. This is Melissa Rice of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Mission. We're at the premiere of Into Darkness, the new Star Trek movie. Yay!

Here is your random space fact. Okay, and some people may remember Melissa Rice as being part of our Carl Sagan Day celebration last fall. She was on the panel of young scientists. And so thank you, Melissa. And I'm sorry you couldn't join us, Guy. Well, if I'd gone without my kids, I would have been in trouble, and it just didn't work out. We will see it shortly.

I'd have covered for you. We will see it shortly. I'd have said you were working or something. We had this important meeting in Hollywood at the Dolby Theater. It could happen. Awesome movie. So anyway, here I'm very pleased with this random space fact. As I've already teased to you, you don't know what it is.

It's so cool. Okay, I'm done. The ratio, it's got to be good. It starts with the word ratio. The ratio of the mass of the sun to the earth. Sun mass to earth mass is about the same as the ratio of the masses of a large elephant to a small mouse. Really? Really.

This is masses because I know a million earths fitting inside the sun. The ratio is about 333,000. Yeah. Okay. I knew it couldn't be the same as volume. It had to be less than the volume. So the ratio is about 333,000. Yeah, okay. I knew it couldn't be the same as volume. It had to be less than the volume. It's 333,000 Earth masses to the sun, but that's about what you get. You can't even just do a run-of-the-mill elephant, a run-of-the-mill hefty mouse.

It's got to be a large elephant and a small mouse. Not a baby mouse, but a small adult mouse. That's a lot of meeses. That's a lot of meeses, That's a lot of meeses. And that's just yet another example of, hey, it's a really big difference. I love that. Do, like zoologists, use this example in reverse? They will now.

Yes. All right. I guess we move on to the trivia contest. And I asked you to name the five largest moons in our solar system. How did we do, Matt? It picked up this week because, you know, it was one that people really weren't too intimidated by. And everybody found them. Everybody found the five biggest moons.

Don't let me bounce these off you. Wait, you still haven't gotten over the sodium doubling. No, I haven't. Okay. All right, go ahead. Ganymede, Callisto, Titan, Io, and woo-hoo, close to home, Luna, our own moon. That is correct. Thank you.

That's not the exact order, but that is correct. All I asked for was the top five. That's true. Well, Craig Hutchinson is the one who provided that particular list, the one I'm looking at, Craig of Suffolk, Virginia, who's been entering for a very long time and finally won one. Yay! Craig, you get Bill Nye's greeting on your answering system, and we'll be in touch with you about that. Got some other cute stuff.

We really ought to give something to Randy Bowdom this week because he said, well, if I could name them, they'd be Bill, Bruce, Emily, Fred, and Matt. Oh, yeah. He totally gets a prize. Fred? With a PH? No. Oh.

Well, then I don't know. I have no idea. Kurt Lewis sent us a trivia question. He said, trivia question back at you. Name the five largest moons when expressed as a fraction of the size of the object they orbit. We'll get Kurt's voice on our answering system. Really?

That's so exciting. We've got a week to come up with the answer for that one. I need to know if he counts Pluto as a planet or not. I was wondering about Pluto because I figured that would have to be on the list. That would be number one. Center of gravity not in the planet. And then Earth's moon to Earth. Cool.

But then I get all fuzzy. Two's good. Okay, I got to do this one just because I know you'll appreciate it. The five largest moons? Yes. Bruce Cordell said, that's no moon. Thank you, Bruce. Yes, I actually got a lot of that.

I tweeted recently the Death Star. We found out about it in 77, but in 79, 80, we found out that it was secretly orbiting. It was pretending to be a moon going around Saturn. Yeah. Looking like Mimas, and I got a lot of, that's no move. All right, new trivia contest. Totally blown away, kid. What planet has the longest solar day?

So that's what we usually think of as a day, like on Earth. The average time for the sun to move from the noon position in the sky back to the same position. But not to be confused with the sidereal day, which is rotation relative to the fixed star. So what planet has the longest solar day? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest and enter our fabulous contest to win what, Matt? And by when, Matt? It's Bill's voice greeting everyone who calls your telephone when you don't answer. And you've got to get it to us by Monday, the 27th.

Monday, May 27th at 2 p.m. Pacific time. Okay, we're not quite done. I have a gift for you. I'm scared. Directly from the premiere of Into Darkness. That seems good. An awesome movie. You ready?

Yeah. It's this popcorn box. Well, that's really cool. Here, let me give you a little sound. I'm sorry. I ate the popcorn. I was hungry. Say goodnight.

Thank you. That's awesome. Thank you, everyone. Go out, look up in the night sky, and think what kind of popcorn case you would give your, I don't know. Your brother in arms. Brother in arms. You've touched me so, so much with this gift. I will treasure it for some period of time. Thank you.

Well, you know, the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many. He's Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society, and he joins us every week here for What's Up. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by a grant from the Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation and by the Trekin members of the Planetary Society. Live long and prosper.