Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Author Andy Weir and Project Hail Mary

Episode Date: May 5, 2021

It is always such fun to welcome back Andy Weir. The author of The Martian and Artemis has just published his most entertaining and inventive novel yet. Project Hail Mary gives an unlikely protagonist the job of saving humanity. Andy also shares his thoughts about the Mars helicopter Ingenuity, his hopes for NASA, and his low opinion of “the goldilocks zone” for life. Someone will win the book in Bruce Betts’ space trivia contest. We also introduce new Planetary Society editor Rae Paoletta. She has written about the mysteries of lightning on Jupiter. Discover more at https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/andy-weir-project-hail-marySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Author Andy Weir returns, this week on the 1,000th episode of Planetary Radio. Welcome, I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. No kidding, 1,000 episodes of Planetary Radio and the Space Policy Edition. And there are a few of you who've been with us from the beginning. Thank you, thank you, thank you. No one is more fun to talk to than Andy. And now he has written what I believe is the best, the most inventive, and the most fun of all his novels. He'll be here in minutes to tell us about Project Hail Mary.

We'll also squeeze in a few thoughts about what's going on in the real world of space exploration. Want a copy of the book? You might win it in Bruce's new space trivia contest. I've also got a new Planetary Society colleague to introduce. Ray Paoletta has just published her first article at Planetary.org, and it's a great start. Here's something I rarely do up front, but maybe our anniversary has emboldened me. You know all those other podcasts that beg you to subscribe, rate, and review in Apple Podcasts? Count us in. If you love our show, even if you just like us, really like us, please share

the love or the like. There are a lot more space enthusiasts out there who don't know we exist, and don't they deserve to know? Okay, on to a few headlines from the current edition of The Down Lake, the Planetary Society's weekly newsletter. It starts with a tribute to the great Michael Collins, Apollo 11 Command Module pilot. He passed away last week at 90. Check out his beautiful photo of Lunar Module Eagle suspended over the moon with our pale blue dot in the background. More about Michael later when Bruce arrives.

Did you doubt that ingenuity would point a camera back at the mothership? It happened on the Mars helicopter's third flight. The shot of Perseverance is kind of grainy and fuzzy, but hey, it was taken by a flying machine on Mars. We also got word that the experimental device known as MOXIE has successfully turned some of the red planet's abundant carbon dioxide into oxygen. And that may be as historic as the successes of ingenuity. Work by SpaceX on the recently awarded NASA contract for a human lunar lander has stopped as consideration is given to the protest filed by both Blue Origin and Dynetics.

In the meantime, the core stage of the Space Launch System has finally made it to the Kennedy Space Center. There's a lot of doubt about whether it will fly the Artemis I mission by the end of this year. More is waiting for you at planetary.org. Ray Pauletta is a new editor at the Planetary Society. She has arrived with a terrific resume, including science writing stints at MTV News, Gizmodo, and Inverse, where she co-hosted the I Need My Space podcast.

Bill Nye was Ray's childhood hero. Now she works for him and our members. She was at her New York City home when we talked for the first time. Ray, welcome to Planetary Radio, and much more importantly, welcome to the Planetary Society. We are thrilled to have you, and I think as people begin to see your work, they will also be very happy. Welcome. Matt, it's a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. When we talk about your work, it is now visible. As of yesterday, as this show becomes available, it's a May 4 article called Why Lightning on Jupiter is a Planetary Unsolved Mystery.

That was a tease. We're going to get to that. But first, I said a little bit about what you were up to before you got to us. But what brought you to us? What drove you to join our happy band at the Planetary Society? I've been a longtime fan of the Planetary Society's work. So it's just so cool to be a part of it now. Good enough for me.

Let's talk about Jupiter. I agree with you. You talk right at the top of your article about Jupiter's beauty, though I have given up on my dream of viewing those swirling clouds up close and in person. It's not just the radiation, it's I don't think I'm going to get a ride. The other thing you said at the top of your piece, though, you asserted that its weather lacks subtlety in the best way. What do you mean? Well, I think for all of us space enthusiasts, we like a little bit of chaos, right? We like to have

something that we can see and say, wow, you know, that really boggles my mind. And Jupiter is, I mean, that's what it's great at, right? Surprises. And so when you see things like its polar cyclones or something like the Great Red Spot, I mean, the storms on Jupiter are, I would say, world class, but it's really in a class of its own on a very different world. Indeed. Lightning. Are we now confident that it really does have lightning more or less as we know it on Earth? Maybe less like we know it on Earth. That's a really good question. I think that it kind of remains to be seen what the details are regarding the lightning on Jupiter. The cool thing is that now we know not only is there almost the lightning on Jupiter. The cool thing is that now we know,

you know, not only is there almost certainly lightning on Jupiter, there are different kinds maybe. So only in the last few years have scientists, particularly on the Juno mission, they've begun to study what they think is something called shallow lightning, which functions very, very differently from how lightning is on Earth. Are we beginning to understand or at least come up with hypotheses about how this lightning takes place? I'm leading up to this great term that you mentioned and new to me in the article, mushballs. Yeah, so it's kind of hysterical. They're almost like slushies of Windex in a way.

The mushball theory seems to be very tied in some way to the formation of shallow lightning. And it's basically that these ice crystals are flung into Jupiter's high atmosphere. And at that sort of high altitude, it's far too cold for water. So scientists had already hypothesized that somewhere along this level of atmosphere, there was some kind of ammonia hail mixture that the mush balls essentially become. It's really interesting because here on Earth, we think of lightning as something that's only tied to water clouds. But as we see on Jupiter, there's always a possibility for something to be a curveball or a mush ball. for something to be a curveball or a mush ball. Yes, yes.

Is there a decent shot at learning more as the Juno mission continues? Yes, so in a lot of ways, so Juno's primary mission wraps up this summer, but its extended mission begins in August, 2021. I think we're just gearing up to see the coolest parts of the mission. I think that we're going to learn as the spacecraft gets closer and closer to Jupiter and its orbit, even more hopefully about the mush ball hypothesis

and how it could be related to something like shallow lightning. I'll be waiting. I'm excited. Me too. A lot to look forward to. And I look forward to many more conversations with you, Ray, here and elsewhere around the society. Congratulations again on joining the staff. Many, many thanks. Thank you so much. That's Ray Paoletta. She is an editor now for the Planetary Society. And you can read her first piece. It's at planetary.org. Why lightning on Jupiter is a planetary unsolved mystery. Why Lightning on Jupiter is a Planetary Unsolved Mystery. I love talking with Andy Weir, and I love his new book.

If you enjoyed The Martian and his more recent Artemis, I suspect you will also enjoy the ride provided by Project Hail Mary. I really do think it's his best yet. I don't think there's anything else I need to say except fasten your seatbelts. Andy Weir, welcome back to Planetary Radio. It is always such a pleasure. Great to be here. I kind of feel like this is my home away from home.

I'm glad. Drop in anytime. I mean it. As you know, I first read Project Hail Mary months ago in preparation for the conversation that you and I had during the Planetary Society's Planet Fest celebration back in February. I picked it up last week so that I could refresh my good memories. And damn you, if I wasn't completely captured again, this, I'm seriously, this may be the cleverest, is that a word?

The most clever science fiction novel I have ever read. Also the most fun and the best laughs I've had from a book in ages. And yet it's about the all out effort to save earth from the greatest threat it has ever faced. Well, thank you. I'm glad it had such a good effect on you. That's the goal. I'm thanking you. You shouldn't be thanking me. I was so reluctant to say much about the story because I didn't want to ruin the wonderful surprises that are ahead for readers. And there'll be lots of them. Then I looked at the glowing reviews, as I just told you, in Amazon and elsewhere. I'm a little less worried now, but I want to warn listeners, there may just be some spoilers in the coming minutes. So why don't you start by saying, what are you comfortable saying about the story that is

Project Hail Mary? Well, in a pre-spoilery way, the story starts with a person, a man waking up with complete amnesia. And so literally anything in the book that I tell you about is kind of a spoiler. But you very quickly find out, through some experimentation, he realizes he's aboard a spaceship. And as his memories start coming back to him, he realizes that he's on a last-ditch effort mission to save humanity from an extinction-level event.

So, you know, no pressure. It's a Hail Mary pass. It is a Hail Mary. Yep. There's something else that I want to thank you for. You have given 15 seconds of science fiction fame to one of the most maligned and underappreciated performers in the history of show business. I'm talking, of course, about the great Shemp Howard. Shemp Howard. That's right. He's a good stooge. He is a good stooge. I hated him as a kid,

but he grew on me later. I could see, you know, this. Well, you know, as a kid, you're like, where's Curly? Exactly. Give me some Curly. Shemp. I mean, every kid,

Curly's your favorite stooge, right? Yeah, of course. I mean, nobody's like, oh, Larry's my favorite. No, Curly, you know? And then... Poor Larry, poor Larry. I have to say, Shemp is there for a good reason, because he represents the first maybe sign of hope for humanity. Yeah, within the story, I mean, basically, the premise of the story is that an alien, a genuinely extraterrestrial

microbe enters our solar system. And these microbes are, you know, they're not intelligent. They're just like the size of bacteria, whatever. And they grow on the surface of stars in the same way that algae grows in the ocean. They collect energy. They migrate to nearby planets to breed. And because the star itself will only have hydrogen, so it needs other atoms, other elements to be able to reproduce. Then it comes back to the star,

and the life cycle begins anew. When it's on a star, it's also sporing out. It's making, God knows how many of these, like 10 to the 20th of them, whatever, And it's sporing out in all directions to seed other stars. It's just like mold or algae or anything else. Problem is it's breeding so out of control on the sun that the solar luminance is going down. Shemp is the nickname given to our protagonist at one point has three of these. Oh, by the way, they're called astrophage. It's what the scientists of Earth call it. It's Greek for eater of stars, which is a bit dramatic. It's not eating the sun any more than algae is eating the ocean.

But it lives there and it's causing us a problem. Eating a lot of photons. It's eating a lot of photons, yeah. So our hero was given, you know, there was a space mission to collect a sample of this stuff and everything. And our hero is able to get a hold of three cells, three astrophage cells, just three to experiment with. And he calls them Larry, Moe and Curly and then basically figures out how to make them breed. He figures out the process to artificially make astrophage reproduce. And so at one point he has a fourth one and he calls it shimp. So that's how we get shimp.

And I defy any other interviewer to come up with that question for you. That is new. That is new. I have not heard that one. Yeah, there's a brief tribute to the immortal Bullwinkle J. Moose too, but we don't have time to go into that. I told you in February that I think there's an average of one ingenious concept and one good laugh in every page of Project Hail Mary. I tested this by turning to random pages and it holds up. I stand in awe. Oh, wow. Well, thank you so much.

I mean, but I imagine like the copyright information page wasn't that hilarious to you. It was a random sample. I guess I didn't hit that. Your hero, and I think he earns the title over the course of the book. He's a middle school science teacher, continuing the spoilers here, named Ryland Grace. I think he is as brilliant and funny as Mark Watney, the Martian, but maybe not quite astronaut material, at least when things get started. No, not at all. And you learn through reading the book that he wasn't really the first choice for this mission. There's a somewhat small pool of potential candidates due to the rigors of the mission. Say no more.

It's a long story, and that story can be found inside the pages of Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, available now. Yeah, he wasn't really anybody's first choice, and he certainly wasn't his own first choice for this mission either. That's putting it mildly. There are two other really important characters in the book. One of them, only one of them is human, though. Willie, she may be somewhat superhuman come to think of us. Tell us about Ava Stratt. Ava Stratt, once Earth and the people of Earth find out about astrophage and realize that the sun's dimming,

they start looking around trying to find out what's going on. And then once they get a sample of astrophage and everything like that, they also start looking at other stars in our neighborhood, nearby stars, and all those stars are dimming too. All the stars in our area are affected by astrophage except one. For whatever reason, they don't know why, the star Tau Ceti, which is 12 light years away, is not affected by astrophage at all. It's not dimming in any way, even though it's well inside of the area where all the other stars are affected. It turns out astrophage itself has the ability to propel itself through space, and it has this incredible ability to store enormous amounts of energy as mass internally and then release it as light. So they develop a space propulsion system that uses astrophage, and their plan is to make a

genuinely interstellar ship using astrophage to propel it to send scientists to Saliseti to try to figure out what's going on. Now, this is the largest, most expensive space mission or even project of any kind in human history. And they put one person in charge of it. And her name is Eva Strat. And she's Dutch. She's from the Netherlands. And she was an administrator at the European Space Agency. And she's definitely the right person for the job. Due to her responsibilities and the urgency of getting this done, she is given an amount of authority that probably no human being has ever had. She can literally just kind of tell countries what to do, and they'll do it. And she has a no-nonsense attitude because what she's doing here, the survival of the human race depends on

it. So she's absolutely not interested in anything else. She doesn't have time for comfortable morality or anything like that. And she would happily, she's stern. She's ruthless. She's ruthless in her pursuit of this, but never selfish and never mean-spirited or anything like that. She's just getting this mission, getting it out there, getting it done is the only thing that matters. And literally everything else is less important. She would happily throw 100 kittens into an incinerator if it would add 1% more probability of this mission succeeding. And she'd sleep well that night. No kittens were harmed in the making of this mission succeeding. And she'd sleep well that night. No kittens were harmed in the making of this radio interview.

There are no kittens in any incinerators in this book. You've given away a lot. But I want to assure everybody, he could give away every big reveal in the book, and it would still be maybe the best science fiction book you've read in a long time. So don't worry. So there was a spoiler warning. If you're here- Yeah.

If you're listening to this and you haven't read the book yet, I mean, if you have it in mind to read the book, I would urge you to read the book first, especially because we haven't even gotten to the biggest spoilers yet. No. And come on, you made a choice, folks. You heard us warn you. I love the irony that this microbe, which has the potential and is on its way to knocking off all of humanity, is also, in a sense, our salvation because it gives us the ability to travel between the stars. Yeah, it is the cause of and solution to our crisis. I really liked that when I came up with it.

I mean, I had a lot of pieces of the story in mind, but when they started to come together, I'm like, oh yeah, this is really cool because this MacGuffin provides the problem and also enables the solution, but doesn't make the solution too easy. I want to talk to you about life, life, the universe and everything.

Life! You actually do create some. solution too easy. I want to talk to you about life, life, the universe and everything. Life. You actually do create some. Ryland Grace, that's our hero. He says a couple of times, I think, that the Goldilocks zone is bullpucky. Those are fighting words to a lot of people who come on this radio show. Yes, especially planetary society people. I don't know. They all say, you know, then we put in quotes, air quotes, life as we don't know it, which your microbes definitely qualify. What does he mean when he says the Goldilocks zone is bullpucky? And do you agree with him?

Well, within the book, Ryland Grace, before he was a junior high science teacher, was a speculative exobiologist. And so he's actually like, he's got a PhD, he's very skilled at molecular biology. And his career was writing papers on how alien life could develop. What might some other forms of life that could exist in the universe, just physically possible to exist. And one thing he said in a paper that he wrote, remember, this is all fiction. In a paper he wrote, he said that the Goldilocks zone is BS because he also said that the assumption that life requires liquid water is also BS. Just because all of the chemical reactions that are in life on Earth and all the chemical reactions that we've even come up with that could support life, all of those require water, liquid water. But he says in his paper, that doesn't mean that the only life anywhere

in this vast universe of ours will be on planets that have liquid water. Some other set of chemical reactions. I mean, all you need for life is a bunch of molecules that undergo a bunch of chemical reactions that make a copy of those molecules. That's all you need for life. You don't need liquid water for that. So he wrote this paper and it ultimately led to him being kind of ostracized in the exobiology community, which is what led him to leave it entirely. It was too stressful a job for him. And he became a junior high science teacher, which he loved. And he found his calling, his teaching. As for me, I do also believe that the so-called Goldilocks zone is BS because the idea of the Goldilocks zone is like, hey, here's the area for those few listeners

who are fans of the planetary radio program, but don't know what the Goldilocks zone is. The idea is it's a region around a star. Each star would have its own different definition of a Goldilocks zone where life is likely to survive. It's called Goldilocks because it's not too hot, not too cold, right? It's just right. In this band, this kind of ring around a star is where the temperature of any planet in that band would be suitable or conducive to having liquid water. Anywhere too close and the stars, the energy from the star will be boiling off the water. Anywhere too close and the energy from the star will be boiling off the water. Any too further away, you'll just have a bunch of ice. But I would say the one simple thing is that's kind of ridiculous because the boiling point of water is dependent on the atmospheric

pressure. If it's really hot and you have a really high pressure, you could have liquid water. Sure. And in fact, that kind of comes up. Although Ryland went a step further and said water is not required at all. Yeah. Since we're well into spoiler territory, he's shown to be wrong. Well, that's right, because they do need some of the basic- They need liquid water.

Some of the same basic building blocks of life. Pretty much all of the same things because, spoiler, spoiler, spoiler, we learned that all of the life in the book is related. There was a panspermia event four billion years ago that life actually

evolved in the Tau Ceti star system, and a progenitor of astrophage, some ancestor of astrophage four billion years ago was also spreading out and seeding itself to stars and that's what ended up seeding life onto a few planets in the area including ours and another one yes yeah and um so astrophage when they take it apart and look at it inside they find boring machinery of cells. Yeah, mitochondria, stuff like that. Yeah, mitochondria, ribosomes, DNA, RNA.

It is very, very similar to Earth life. And they also find that astrophage is full of liquid water. How the hell does something that lives on the sun have liquid water? Well, because astrophage takes heat energy and turns it into mass that it stores. So all the heat going into astrophage is, not all, but a lot of the heat going into astrophage is turned into just stored energy. And the temperature inside of the astrophage cell itself is much, much lower than the temperature outside.

Brilliant stuff. It really is. And of course, that particular mechanism that drives the astrophage, it's in the realm of Arthur C. Clarke's definition of magic, because who knows? Right. I mean, in any given science fiction story, no matter how rigorous the author wants to stick with real science, if you dig deep enough, you're going to find the BS, right? And in my case, you have to dig all the way down to the quantum level to find it, but it's there. The means by which astrophage stores energy, I defined it because I go way down the rabbit hole. I really enjoy the research. I do way more than I should or need to. I waste a lot of time that way.

But the means that astrophage uses to store energy is it turns heat energy into neutrinos. How? Shut up. That's how. And then it stores the neutrinos until needed. How? Again, shut up. That's how. What's that line from the guys who did the Star Trek technical manual? You know, how does the Heisenberg compensator work? Very well, thank you. Very well, yes. Well, I invented some new physics. I said that astrophage, the production of neutrinos, which I call neutrinogenesis, happens kind of in an area between the astrophage's cell wall and the rest of the cell. And there's an area where there's free hydrogen ions, just protons, banging around. And somehow within this area, those proton-proton collisions, the kinetic energy of those collisions gets turned into neutrinos, two neutrinos going opposite directions to balance energy and momentum. And then I said that that process of neutrino genesis also causes the cell

wall to have a property that I made up called super cross-sectionality. So you think of a superconductor, that's an electric conductor that has literally zero resistance. Not very, very little resistance, but actually zero. Well, super cross-sectionality is the cell membrane of astrophage cannot be quantum tunneled through. No particle can quantum tunnel through it. It cannot be on one side and then be on the other side. It must collide. That's wonderful.

Yeah. So that is how it's able to contain neutrinos, which are notoriously difficult to control. Yes. And then neutrinos themselves are margarita particles, which means they're their own antiparticles. So if you do manage to smash two neutrinos together, they will annihilate and turn into photons. And they'll turn into photons in the infrared band, because that's the amount of energy that they have. So if two neutrinos collide, they turn into two photons, and those two photons will have the mass energy that the neutrinos had, which allowed me to calculate the frequency of light that astrophage expel as thrust.

Which is actually a key point in the book. It's important. Yeah. It ends up being called the Petrova frequency in the book. Keep doing all that research because it's what makes all this stuff so much fun. Could we say that behind all of this is, you know, in the immortal words of Jeff Goldblum, life finds a way. Life, uh, uh, finds a way. Well, sure.

I mean, it's, you know, this is the most speculative novel I've written, right? It's The Martian. You can see like, yeah, I could see that happening. Artemis, you're like, sure, something like that could happen. We'll probably have a city on the moon someday and whatever. But this is like, okay, an extraterrestrial microbe comes into our system. Well, it's much more speculative, but I wanted to stick with just like, see what I can do about not violating physics as much as possible. And so much of the rest of this is completely based in actual science that we know about and can conduct now. And it comes up pretty much every page.

It's part of the fun. Andy Weir will tell us more about Project Hail Mary when we return. He'll also share some expert opinions about Ingenuity, the Artemis Lunar Program, and more in barely a minute. Stick around. Planetary Radio is once again brought to you by Aura Frames. Mine is still humming away next to me as I write this. Okay, not literally humming because it's silent. It's showing me beautiful images of my family, our trip to the mountains a few days ago,

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up to $100 off your purchase of an Aura digital frame if you use the code PLANET. Visit auraframes.com to redeem this special offer. It's good through Mother's Day. That's auraframes.com with the code PLANET. I took notes about the remaining major character in the book. I'm so reluctant to say anything about that character because... A second double spoiler wing. Really? You know, turn off your radio or your device for the next five minutes. Now you're not just in the spoiler compound. You're about to enter the spoiler inner sanctum.

Well, I love that. I'm not going to totally give it away. We can if you want. Yeah, we have too many smart listeners. No, here's how it goes. First of all, are you a fan of the great Randall Munro? Of course. XKCD.

Of course you are. Of course. Everyone is. Everyone should be. You probably know his book. I mean, I got it right here. You can see it. The Thing Explainer.

Where he takes on much of the universe and a lot of technology and manages to explain it all in the thousand most commonly used English words. You made me think of that book because of the way Dr. Grace has to communicate periodically. Oh, yes. In Thing Explainer, I especially like the Upgoer 5. That's right. Saturn 5, for those of you who haven't read the book, there's much more like that. We're only recommending two books today. Yeah. I'll tell you a secret. My dream planetary radio segment is to get you, Randall Munro, and JPL chief engineer Rob Manning together for a conversation about anything and everything space and science.

Wouldn't that be fun? Randall Munroe and I were together at a Google event once. Really? Wow. Yeah, I've never met him, but we've corresponded a little bit. He's cool. You talked about how that other hero, she never leaves the surface of Earth.

Strat. Strat. Strat. She manages to pull together humanity. And the world does come together to battle its impending doom. For example, a lot of the action takes place on a Chinese aircraft carrier. Yep. People wonder if we will be able to find the same unanimity in the real world if we ever face a similar global catastrophe, like, let's say, avoiding the impact of a giant asteroid. That

might be the best example. Do you think that we have it in us to come together the way they do in your book? Absolutely. Not only do I think we have it in us, I think we would definitely 100% do it. Because these fictional scenarios are not vague, long-term difficulties like climate change. And I'm not poo-pooing climate change. I'm just saying that that's not a thing that you can definitively say, look, every human being is going to die as a result of this. We need to deal with it. Climate change is like some species are probably going to go extinct. Some species are probably going to go extinct and shoreline, you know, buildings along the shores might end up becoming non-habitable and you might not be able to grow wheat in this area anymore. So you have to grow barley or something like that. And it's hard to get people to care a lot about that. But if you're talking about like an Armageddon or deep impact scenario where it's like, oh yeah, see that big rock in the sky that is going to come kill us. And it's going to

happen on Thursday, March 9th, you know, something like that, then you can absolutely expect all the world to work together. As we talk about this, the globe, the world is in the midst of the planetary defense conference. It'll be over by the time people hear this, but yeah, there are actually people trying to consider this stuff. I suppose there's a bit of the frog in the midst of the Planetary Defense Conference. It'll be over by the time people hear this. But yeah, there are actually people trying to consider this stuff. I suppose there's a bit of the frog in the pot scenario here. Well, for climate change, certainly. But for Project Hail Mary, it's another one of those. Everyone on Earth understands the idea,

if the sun gets dim, we're all going to die. They get it. It's like plants need the sun, and gets dim, we're all going to die. They get it. It's like plants need the sun and without plants, we die, you know, and so on. Again, it's one of those scenarios where it is not arguable. It's not like climate change, which is a slow erosion of our environment in ways that are damaging and bad, but aren't going to end the species. This is like, within the fictional context, this is an indisputable threat. We won't say how it all comes out. You may be able to guess, but I will tell you, you'll have great fun getting there. It happened with the Martian. You told me that it was underway

with Artemis. Have you heard from anyone who wants to turn Project Hail Mary into a movie? Because I'd be first in line. Yes, it's plugging along. MGM bought the film rights. Bought them outright, didn't just do an option, which for those who don't know the film industry just means that ordinarily when a studio options a book, they give you a small amount of money. Well, small for a studio, large for me, but they give you a small amount of money to reserve the rights. They haven't actually bought the rights yet, but they're just giving you that money. And it means that for the next 12 months or 18 months, whatever the contract says, you're not allowed to sell the rights to anyone else.

It's like a non-refundable deposit. Yeah, it's basically a deposit. You actually work out the entire rights contract, including what they would pay to buy the rights to anyone else. It's like a non-refundable deposit. Yeah, it's basically a deposit. You actually work out the entire rights contract, including what they would pay to buy the rights from you in advance. And they and they alone have the option to buy the rights. And they can buy the rights from you simply by cutting you the big check at that point. Now, MGM skipped that phase and just said, we want to buy the rights directly, which is good. So they gave me the big check right away, which I like because money is awesome. And then we also have Ryan Gosling attached to play the lead. Oh, wow.

Which is awesome because he has the same initials as Rylan Grace. So he could bring his own cufflinks to set. That is a terrific choice. I think he's great for that part. He's ideal for the role. And then we have Phil Lord and Chris Miller set to direct, the directing duo. Oh, man. Okay. Yeah, they're a hot property in Hollywood.

And we have the illustrious Drew Goddard working on the screenplay. Now, Drew is the one who adapted the screenplay of The Martian. So we like Drew. Good track record. Yeah. I'm glad we're talking about The Martian again because we got to talk about real space before I let you go.

Well, is there anything interesting going on on Mars? I was going to ask you about that little helicopter, that little whirly bird. Don't you think having a little drone to play with might have helped Mark Watney pass the time? Probably would have. Yeah, probably would have. He's like, this is fun. I'm not accomplishing anything. You know, if you'd asked me a few years ago, hey, what do you think about a helicopter

on Mars? I would have said, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Because Mars has like less than 1% of our atmosphere. Those blades are going to be going absurdly fast. It's going to have to weigh like nothing. And well, they did it and it works. So to paraphrase the great Jeff Goldblum, JPL finds a way. JPL, uh, uh, uh, finds a way. I could say there was a lot of ingenuity in the design of that helicopter. Yeah, one might. How do you feel about other stuff that you're seeing? We have a contract that's been awarded,

although it's been contested, to take a really big spaceship full of people to the moon. Maybe they'll build a little town there. I think I know what they got to call it if they do. Well, it's what they call the program. It's the Artemis program. That's true, yeah. Where do you think?

What do you think of our status? I'm excited, but the best I can get about major missions nowadays is cautiously optimistic because NASA's priorities keep changing, changing and changing, not through any fault of their own. It's just that it changes every administration. However, the previous administration and the current administration are both game to go to the moon. So it's kind of nice for NASA to not have a massive shift in priority with a change of administration. So maybe they can seize on that and make some progress in one direction for a change rather than being told to go back and forth and stuff like that. That's something a lot of us are keeping our fingers crossed about. What's in store from that wildly inventive mind of yours? Well, I'm already working on my next book now. I'm working on the setup for it.

I'm doing the research and stuff. And I don't tell anybody publicly what my plans are until I'm sure that I'm going to write that book. Because sometimes I'll get a few chapters into an idea and say like, I don't know, this isn't working or maybe another idea is better. So I don't want to like tell everybody I'm working on something and then not do it. Didn't you tell me once though, that you have like scores of potential books tucked away up there? Yeah, I've probably gotten more ideas than lifespan to write them. You know, some of the ideas turn out not to work. You know, I'll write a few chapters and I'm like,

this isn't as cool in reality as I thought it was going to be when I envisioned it. So this is not the book I'm going to write right now. And then other times it'll be like, yeah, I put work into it. It sucks. And I set it aside. But then I strip it for parts. Later, I take something, which is the case with Project Hail Mary. Some elements from Project Hail Mary came from a failed book that I was working on called Jacques. I was working on Jacques after The Martian and before Artemis. And it didn't work out. And I put it on a back burner, or actually I put it in the refrigerator, whatever you want to call it. But there were a couple of nuggets of awesomeness in Jec that I stole for Project Hail Mary. One of them is Strat is based directly on a character that was in Jec. So she was kind of imported from Jec. And also Astrophage is very similar to, in Jec,

it was an alien technology and in Project Hail Mary, it's a naturally evolved life form. But astrophage is very similar to a MacGuffin that was in Jacques. So I'll strip it for parts and say like, okay, this, this, this, and this are cool. I'm using that. The rest of the story sucks. It's staying in the fridge. You know, every time we talk, I think, God, it can't possibly be as much fun as it was last time. But it always is. Aw, thanks, Matt. No, thank you. And thanks for this

outstanding book that I recommend very, very highly. Thank you so much. Andy Weir is the software engineer whose somewhat successful hobby is writing terrific, best-selling fiction that leads to smash-hit movies. His latest novel, the one we've been talking about, is Project Hail Mary. It has just been published by Ballantine Books, and we'll be giving away a copy when Bruce Betts arrives in moments with his new What's Up Space Trivia Contest. That's it.

And scene. It's time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. Here is the chief scientist of the Planetary Society, Bruce Betts. Welcome back. Welcome for number 1,000. This is the 1,000th Planetary Radio episode. That's stunning. Stunning. And 1,000 for you, it's only a 950 something for me but you were there at the beginning so i think that this is an anniversary that you can celebrate as well i hope everybody's celebrating where's my cake i mean all you have to do is hang in there for 18 and a half years and produce one every week with almost no repeats ever. And oh, by the way, out of space policy edition once a month. That's all you have to do. That's so dumb. Why would

anybody do that? I don't know. But we speaking for all the listeners and the people at the Planetary Society, we are so grateful that you are that dumb. Thank you, Pat Kaplan. Thank you. I'm sure I can assure you I'll keep it up. Way to be dumb. We can count on you. So just like we did 1,000 episodes ago, tell us about the night sky. It's identical to that first episode. Would you believe? No, it's not. But it's a planet party to celebrate a thousand episodes. If you're lucky and can see really low to the horizon, you can actually pick up all five naked eye visible planets

between the evening and morning sky. In the evening, we've got Mercury making a nice apparition for Mercury. In the evening west, low down, but much lower is super bright Venus. That's one that you're really going to have to have a clear view to the horizon soon after sunset. But Venus will be coming up and be bright and partying later on. So check out Mercury. And if you want to see the crescent moon playing with the planets, On the 12th, it will be near Venus. On the 13th, near Mercury. And on the 15th, a little higher up,

also in the southwest, will be Mars. Mars that's hanging out near Gemini's feet right now. Kind of stinky. But wait, don't order yet. If you're picking this up soon after it came out, check out the Eta Aquarids meteor shower on May 6th and 7th. Particularly good if you're picking this up soon after it came out, check out the Ada Aquarids meteor shower on May 6th and 7th. Particularly good if you're in the southern hemisphere. So that peaks the night of the 6th and 7th. Good a few days before and after. And I'll just preview, we'll talk about

it more next week, total lunar eclipse coming May 26th. I was just thinking when you said that the sky is exactly the same as it was 1,000 episodes ago, it would be kind of as if we were the Mayan calendar and it's all just this great circle of life. I love that concept. As you've done so many times to me over all these episodes, I am stunned.

I have no response. So I'll just move on to this week in space history. It was 60 years ago this week, Alan Shepard became the first American in space. And it was 2003 that Hayabusa launched on its way to sample an asteroid. Big week. On to random space fact.

Number 1,000 for that too. Pay tribute to Michael Collins, who passed this last week. Of course, Apollo 11 astronaut. But he was also the first person to perform two spacewalks, or two extravehicular activities, EVAs. Both were during his Gemini 10 flight. One was a stand-up EVA, so stood up and took pictures, and the other went with an umbilical over to the Agena target vehicle they had rendezvoused with, which also made him the first person to travel between two vehicles in space.

Very, very accomplished man, and quite a great artist, too. I'm only sorry that I was never able to have him on the show. He also just, judging from all reports about him, was just a really decent, good guy. Yes, he will be missed. We move on to the trivia contest. Apparently in an attempt to confuse people again accidentally, I asked you, what is the only IAU constellation whose name is derived from a geographical feature on Earth. How'd we do? Although I know how we did. How'd we do, Matt? I'm going to start with this from Gene Lewin in Washington. He wrote us this lovely long poem. We only have time for the last stanza, and I'm

going to read it because it provides the answer I think you're looking for. Lastly, he chose a mountain, assigning this terrestrial label overlooking Cape Town. It is Mensa, or the Table. Yeah? Yes, indeed. So the constellation Mensa, Latin for table, was named after Table Mountain in South Africa, where 18th century French astronomer Nicolas Louis de la Caille, sorry, I can't pronounce French, named several constellations in the southern sky after instruments and things. And so he named that one after Table Mountain, and it got shortened to Table, but it was originally known as Mons Mense, or Table Mountain.

And a couple of listeners were aware of this, that apparently there was a terrible fire, forest fire on Table Mountain in South Africa. I believe it has been extinguished now, but really very destructive in the beautiful state park there. So we are sorry to hear about that, but interesting that that would come up right now. A whole bunch of people also gave us Eridanus.

You said it had to be one of the 88 IAU-recognized constellations, right? Yes, I did. Eridanus, too many people to mention, said, is a river mentioned in Greek mythology, but is also the name given to a real underground stream near Athens in Greece. Would you have accepted this? Do I need to know? No, you really don't.

Because our winner. I would be inclined not to accept it, to be honest. But it's so close that, yeah, I would have accepted it. But that was named after the mythical river rather than being named after the earth feature at least that's my understanding that one's a lot harder to sort out because it was named by the greeks two thousand more years ago as opposed to the 18th century when we know the story of it so sure i but i would have slightly accepted that. Fortunately, we are saved from that controversy because Random.org, in its wisdom, chose a first-time winner.

Al Pierce in Oregon, who said Mensa. He didn't explain all the Table Mountain stuff, but I think Mensa was good enough, right? Yes. Yes, it was. Congratulations, Al. You are going to get a copy of the Mars Pocket Atlas from Henrik Hagete and the European Central European Hub. We've been talking about it for a while now. I think we're going to give one more copy away next week because we have a new prize

to announce this time. I'll say it again. It is gorgeous. It's a real travel atlas. And I'm guessing, Alan, that you will get a little overlay of the state of Oregon that you can use to judge the scale of stuff on the red planet. So congratulations. Congratulations. And there's more.

Oh, there's more. This time there's more. Excellent. And there's more. Oh, there's more. This time there's more. Excellent. Keith Pratt, whilst being a member of Mensa, you know, that association of geniuses, which I'm not a member of.

Are you? I can neither confirm nor deny whether I'm a member. I'll watch for the secret handshake. He says, whilst being a member of Mensa, he's from the UK, gives you bragging rights, being a member of the Planetary Society is much better. Love the podcast. Yay. Mark Nischelski in California. He says, that's great. Wonderful constellation. He says, though, he'd rather have the sky commemorate an air pump.

Congratulations. They did. Same person, but it wasn't, it was just a generic air pump rather. I mean, maybe it was the astronomer's air pump. I don't know. Finally, from Dave Fairchild, our poet laureate in Kansas, Mensa is a constellation near the southern pole. It was named for Table Mountain, African, I'm told. It's not much to look at, and it stars a very faint, the large Magellan cloud is in it. Famous, though, it ain't. Well, it is now. Much more so than ever before in its entire history. We're ready to go on. Back to Michael Collins. On Michael Collins's second EVA, what did he collect from the Agena target vehicle and what unrelated item did he lose during the EVA? We're looking for two things here. One thing he collected from the Agena target vehicle, the other he just lost in space. You have until Wednesday, May 12th at 8 a.m.

Pacific time to get us this answer. And you might just win a copy of that terrific book, Project Hail Mary by who else? Andy Weir that you've just heard Andy and I talking about. It's that good, folks. It is that great a book and it is now available from all the usual places. Who's that third character? I was so reluctant to talk about it. I wanted to leave something for people to discover. I think people probably figured out that he's not from around here, but he's just great.

He's beautifully realized. So it's not you? No, it's not me. I wish it was. It's kind of a buddy picture is what it will be when it becomes a movie. I will say no more. It's absolutely delightful. So we can star in a buddy picture is what it will be when it becomes a movie. I will say no more. It's absolutely delightful.

So we can star in the buddy picture. You and me. Absolutely. I'm going to be Ryland Grace. I'm going to be the human. That sounds ominous. All right, everybody. Go out there, look up in the night sky,

and think about circling the moon alone in a spacecraft for a while. Thank you and good night. Apparently, it's a very peaceful existence for those few hours or days as you circle in the command module. I'm ready to go. He is Bruce Betts. I don't know if he's ready or not, but he is the chief scientist of the Planetary Society who joins us every week here for What's Up. Planetary Radio is produced of the Planetary Society who 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 its members.

Members or not, don't forget to give us an Apple Podcast rating or review. Mark Gilverde is our associate producer. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which is arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. Ad Astra.