Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Bill Nye Saves the World…With Space

Episode Date: April 26, 2017

It was a big week for the Science Guy, and for science. Bill Nye served as honorary co-chair of the March for Science in Washington DC. His new Netflix series, Bill Nye Saves the World, premiered the next day. Two of the show’s thirteen episodes are devoted to space science and exploration. Bill talks about all this in a special conversation with Mat Kaplan.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bill Nye saves the world with space, 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. A conversation with the science guy, just days after the premiere of his Netflix TV series that prominently features space exploration and space science. No surprise there. Later, we'll get Bruce Bett's take on the night sky and hear a random space factor, too. Emily Lakdawalla is not yet back from sabbatical, but she will be next week.

Planetary Society digital editor Jason Davis is here to talk about the real beginning of the end for one of the greatest missions of exploration ever. Jason, you wrote last week about, well, an event that's already underway, happened over the weekend. Tell us about the latest from Cassini. Yeah, so the spacecraft did its final close flyby of Titan. After all these years, all these cool images and flybys on the outer side of Saturn's rings, it went by Titan closely for the last time. And that Bennett's trajectory, this was on purpose, of course, onto this new path that's going to send it actually between the planet and the rings. So right now it's kind of arcing up over the planet

and getting ready to plunge between the planet and the rings for So right now it's kind of arcing up over the planet and getting ready to plunge between the planet and the rings for the very first time. This is the beginning of what we've been calling, Linda Spilker and I talk about this, the grand finale. Yeah, yeah, the big grand finale. So we get onto this new trajectory, 22 orbits I believe is the count, and then the spacecraft will be intentionally sent into the planet itself. So it's going to be a wild final phase of the mission here, going out in a bang. But we should see some really cool stuff as the spacecraft goes through these wild orbits. That first pass between the planet and the rings will already have happened, as most people hear this program.

It's going to be on Wednesday the 26th, and we will be talking to Emily Lakdawalla, our long-lost colleague about that. She is returning from her sabbatical, and she's going to be at JPL for this. Is there concern about danger to the spacecraft? Yeah, there is. It seems like a slight concern. So they're using, the JPL scientists in their press conference were saying, we're pretty sure we know where the innermost ring ends. So they do a lot of modeling and they look at the data they already have from the mission, but they can't say with absolute certainty where that ring kind of ends. And it might be that some extra stray particles of dust and rock and ice are left there in that final gap. If that happens,

then it could be catastrophic for the spacecraft if one of these things were to kind of slam through it as it's traveling at very high speeds through that gap. They're pretty sure that won't happen. But just in case, they're orienting the main antenna, the big dish on the front of it, to kind of act as a shield just for a little extra precaution as it goes through for the very first time. Which I suppose means that we will not be hearing from Cassini as it makes this pass. Yeah, when it comes out on the other side, then it'll start sending its first data back to Earth. Actually, the nominal signal acquisition, I'm looking at the little schedule they have here, actually comes right after midnight

on the 27th. And that's when they'll know that everything went well. And then shortly after that, I believe they expect to start getting some early images down. And that's what hopefully Emily will be there to see. So that's really exciting. Yeah, this is going to be amazing. And exploration involves risk, doesn't it? Yeah, it sure does. That's Jason Davis. He's a digital editor for the Planetary Society. You can read his even more recent piece about the Space Launch System, that giant rocket, which sounds, Jason, like maybe it's going to be a while longer before we see that first launch? Yeah, we're starting to see a lot of signs that are kind of piling up

that point to a possible delay. It was always pretty iffy whether they could do 2018 near the end, but I'm kind of officially calling it that I think it's going to be delayed. So this article kind of lays out the three key pieces of evidence that I see that are all pointing to a delay at this point. And you can check out all of Jason's reasoning at planetary.org. Thanks, Jason. Thank you, Matt. Hi, folks. I'm Bill Nye. You may remember me from the Science Guy show. Well, I'm back talking science again with a new show and a new lab. I'm loving me some Netflix on the electric internet machines that all the kids are using.

I've got some new friends, a hand-picked team of brilliant correspondents who've traveled the globe to bring us some astonishing stories. As you've probably guessed, we're not really making a kid show. It's for you grown-up kids all over the world. We're going to be talking about important, perhaps even controversial issues from scientific points of view. And we're going to make it a lot of fun along the way. I know, I know. A lot has changed. But one thing hasn't. The process of science.

How we know what we know. And there's still so much we don't know. See, for me, curiosity is part of what makes us human. It's what drives us. The joy of discovery. It's the essence of science. Are you with me? Yeah!

Are you excited? Let's get going. See, you, me, we're in this together. If we think together and work together, good things are going to happen. Let's get started. And that's how it starts. Bill Nye's new Netflix show, Bill Nye Saves the World. He's taking a break from saving the world to join us.

I don't know, maybe this is saving the world too. Hey, Bill. Man, this is consistent with the big message. This is another brick in the saving the world ziggurat. The stepped pyramid of world too. Hey, Bill. Matt, this is consistent with the big message. This is another brick in the saving the world ziggurat, the stepped pyramid of world saving. Thank you for taking a few extra minutes beyond the regular segment with us today so we can talk about this show. But before we talk about the show, everybody out there is saying, March for Science. He was at the March for Science. It appeared to go well. It went really well. I was thrilled. I think everybody was very pleased. So the March for Science. He was at the March for Science. It appeared to go well. It went really well. I was thrilled. I think everybody was very pleased. So the March for Science, everybody, was started by a physician in New York and her buddy. And it just became this worldwide phenomenon. Over 600 marches around the world. You get messages that you'd expect from Berkeley and Seattle, but Paris?

You know, Parisians aren't always on board with what the United States has in mind. And Sydney, Australia, it was huge, as we say in modern parlance. Berlin had an enormous event because everybody's concerned about science being set aside in our policymaking. And I like to remind everybody, if you read it closely, it's not too much effort, you'll see in the U.S. Constitution, it refers to promoting the progress of science and useful arts. And I think my opinion is useful arts in the 19th or the 18th century referred to city planning and architecture and plow crafting and things like that. Engineering, what I would call engineering. It's in the constitution, everybody. It is political,

It is political, but not partisan, just like space exploration. Ah, good segue. Thank you. And by the way, I'd have been marching, but I was in Southern Illinois talking to kids about space science. I had a great time doing it because that's where I'll be going back to in August for the eclipse at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. But enough of that. Just a little plug. Yeah, a little plug. What got you into this new show, which by the way, I love. I think that, you know, you've done a lot of good television between the Science Guy show and this. I was a big fan of

Bill Nye's Stuff Happens, but this seems to me to be the return of the science guy to TV in some ways. Well, we have a commitment from Netflix. The word commitment is Bill's euphemism for money. But really, we had the resources to build a cool set, to hire some very, very skilled audio guys, video guys, and the remarkable crew, the, the correspondents, the on-camera department, as I like to call us. And we had the resources to send Carly Kloss to Italy, to send Derek Muller to South Korea and Holland, to send Emily Calandrelli to India, this thing. She's always wanted to be there, and she did a story. She's Space Gal.

She's on the electric internet. She did a story that you'd expect where she went to Team Indus, this lunar XPRIZE team, which a bunch of young Indian engineers, many of whom are women, by the way. Then she did this story on polio. years, many of whom are women, by the way. Then she did this story on polio. She met the guy that is generally believed to be the last person to have gotten polio. He's in his 20s. He's a software engineer. He lives in a wheelchair. And as I like to remind everybody, I went to elementary school with a kid who had a guy who had polio. You do not want polio. Nobody wants polio. And you avoid it by

getting vaccinated, not by eating organic soybeans. They don't do it. You got to have the vaccine. You avoid it with science. Yes. Yes, Matt. Yes. I started to binge yesterday because I was away. Matt, I think you might want to clarify for your listeners, you're binging on watching television. Yeah. I don't know. Is that worse?

Well, there's some debate about that. What's the only thing we don't have on Earth is time. So, yes, but I appreciate you getting her down. I've seen four episodes so far, including the opening from which we grabbed that piece that we started this segment with today. Oh, the promo. The promo, yeah.

But then, of course, I went to the two episodes, two of 13 on Netflix that you devote to space and what space has for us here down on Earth. The first, you look at this concept, which has come up on this show before. It's episode number five. You talk about panspermia. How did you choose these topics? I mean, there are so many that you could have taken. You had to whittle it down to 13.

And two for space made it in. Matt, here's a feature of talk shows. And you have one, I guess, on the radio. It has to be an extension of the of the host whether or not you like the host is almost secondary it has to be an extension of the person on camera be it Stephen Colbert or Chelsea Handler or Jimmy Kimmel it's got to be an extension of that person so I have an interest a deep and abiding interest in space. So I did two of the first 13 on space. Now, Matt, it is to be hoped that this is just the first 13.

Let's keep going. Let's do a show on the brain and consciousness. Let's do a show on evolution. Let's do a show on addiction. Let's do a show, you know, let's do another show on addiction. Let's do another show on space. And it's been proposed, and this was not my idea, Matt, that we have a climate change-related episode in every batch that Netflix chooses to pay for. Because climate change is such a serious issue. And that was your first episode in this new series.

Yeah. Now, everybody, here's what happens is you pick 13, you do them. And then the man who is often a woman and Netflix makes a decision about how to arrange them, what order to publish them on their website. But in the modern era, that is to say right now, all 13 episodes are posted the same day, same moment. It was midnight Pacific time, 3 a.m. Eastern time here in North America. They put climate change first because I felt, I believe they felt that it was an important issue. They wanted people to see that one.

Whatever the order is, I love the show. I think it's really good. I love you, man. Thank you, man. And that set is fantastic. That set really is. Oh, man, it's crazy. It's cool.

It goes on and on. Yeah, yeah, it goes way back. And that was not my vision, everybody. But I went with it. And so, you know, Matt, just technically, we didn't used to have that many white surfaces. The cameras, it was believed, would explode and the world would stop spinning if you had anything white on camera. And it didn't used to be so brightly lit. And

it didn't used to be so big. But it is. We shot it in an enormous soundstage at Sony, a big lot in Culver City, California, which is part of Los Angeles. All right. I wasn't going to mention this because we got other things to talk about, but you ever see the movie Fantastic Voyage? I mean, how many times has a guy my age seen Fantastic Voyage? Yes. Yeah. So me too. And when I looked at both your ceiling and your floor, I thought, oh, that's the shrink room in Fantastic Voyage where the lab is. Oh, that's the shrink room in Fantastic Voids where the lab is.

So the gang there, because they're medical researchers, their wetsuits were white, which is a little unusual. But your eye went right to it, as we say. Yeah. Panspermia. Important stuff to you because, of course, you have those two great questions that you like to ask, which are? Where did we all come from? And are we alone in the universe? Yeah, which panspermia addresses both of those. So I could see why you'd choose that. And plus, Matt, everybody, you know, we're talking about all sorts of things. We're talking

about television, we're talking about space exploration, what I'm interested in, you like the shows, but everybody, it is a real thing that we are living at a real time when we could actually discover real life on another world or evidence of life. And those, the two candidate worlds in the short, in the immediate term are Mars and Europa, the moon of Jupiter with twice as much seawater as the earth. Yes. Enceladus. Yes. At Saturn. Want to go bring it on, sea waters, the earth. Yes, Enceladus. Yes, at Saturn, want to go, bring it on. But everybody, the significance of this would be enormous. I think the modern expression is huge. The significance would be world-changing. It really would be akin to discoveries made by Galileo or Copernicus, be profound. And we are on the cusp of making those discoveries using very carefully crafted

instruments aboard a very carefully cleaned rover. Why anybody would not want to spend a little bit of intellect and treasure on this would be a little bit of a mystery. But with that said, here in the United States, we have two members of Congress who are passionate about this, who don't agree about much anything else. But Adam Schiff and John Culberson pretty much agree that Europa is the greatest thing ever, and they want to send a mission there. Bill Nye the Science Guy. More from Bill about his new TV series is just ahead. This is Planetary Radio. I'm Casey Dreyer, the Planetary Society's Director of Space Policy. In the last five years, our members have helped to achieve pretty much every single advocacy priority we've had. It's been amazing.

NASA's planetary science budget is above one and a half billion again, and it's growing. We have new missions to Mars in 2020 and Europa. We've sent over 400,000 letters to Congress and the White House in order to achieve this. And your generosity has enabled us to grow this program up to three full-time staff dedicated to space policy. But we have a new Congress, a new president, and soon a new NASA administrator. Decisions are being made right now that are going to impact the future of NASA for a generation, if not more. So we need your support now more than ever to build on the momentum we've created here. So please, join us. Invest in our

advocacy program. Go to planetary.org slash advocacy. Thank you. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan with my boss, Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye. The Science Guy is fresh from co-chairing the March for Science and from the April 21st premiere of his new Netflix series, Bill Nye Saves the World. It's the return of Bill to a TV laboratory, the one with a much bigger budget than his science guy show of 20 years ago. You bring in these correspondents, they seem sort of universally energetic, passionate, attractive. Well, they're on camera.

You know, I mean, understand when people go on camera, they put on makeup. I don't want to shock you all, but it's people of both genders. Yeah. Dress up. I mean, you're on the TV, for crying out loud. And they do a heck of a job. I mean, you know, not that there's anything wrong with old dudes like us, but they do pretty well. And when we go to that episode, which you can watch randomly, as Bill said, Saving the World with Space,

you already said that you send Emily to India. You already said that you send Emily to India, and that was fantastic, watching her talk to these kids about sending stuff to the moon. For your listeners' reminder, this is Emily Calendrilli, not Emily Laktawalla, but they know each other. Women in science journalism all seem to hang out. Diana, the physics girl. You know, like everybody, they all know each other. It's very cool. You've also got other terrific guests that you bring in.

I guess there's one of these panel discussions, I'm going to assume, in every episode. And there were some people who've been on this show, George Whitesides, Chris Lewicki, Michelle Fowler. I hope I got her name right. I have not talked with her. Yeah, she's great. But there are different viewpoints brought to this. George, of course, from Virgin Galactic.

Chris Lewicki from Planetary Resources, the folks who want to mine asteroids. Michelle Fowler representing NASA. Not always total agreement among these. There is some diversity of opinion. Well, that's our goal. Yes, Matt, we want diversity, of course. And that's not that hard to get. But we are not going down the road in the example of climate change, where we make it look like it's 50-50. Where there's, oh, there's climate change deniers who have a valid

and reasonable point of view that we should know. In the case of vaccines, well, we have some anti-vaxxer people who make their... No, no, no. That's not science. We're done. We're done with you. But in the details, that's where I think it gets fascinating. You talk about the value of exploring space. You come at it from different angles. You start with that pretty prosaic but practical one of showing us some of the stuff we wouldn't have if we hadn't been going out there. of trying to explore space because when you explore space, you're solving problems that have never been solved before because you're going to a place that no human generation before the 20th century had any access to. So all these remarkable products, including the technology that enables our transcontinental radio recording, Matt,

podcast recording, would not be here without this investment in the space program. And while everybody acknowledges that, it's worth reminding people. You have a lot of terrific props during the show. And of course, you do experiments. One of my favorite props is... He loves the props, everybody. I do. Well, Matt, I'll just tell you, as a producer, as a television producer, I like to tell everybody I remind everybody every day,

what is the greatest thing about this next segment we're about to shoot here on the soundstage? The props. What's the worst thing about the next thing we're going to shoot? The props. It's the blessing and the curse, the blurs. Here's one of my favorite props. You reach under your table in the lab and you pull up a globe. And there are flags all over this globe.

And that even surprised me. I knew there were space programs everywhere. Oh, it's wild. Every country, a great many countries, including Vietnam, has a space program because they know, they've seen the value of having their academic people and engineers engaged in the endeavor of exploring space. And there are tremendous practical things now everywhere. In the developing world, it's quite common to meet people who have mobile phones and have never used a landline, not chosen not to have one, they've just never seen it. What are you talking about?

What do you mean a landline? The communication that results from those mobile systems depend on space exploration. Everybody wants the weather and everybody wants, by everybody, countries around the world want to have navigation systems for their citizens, both ocean-going countries, which you'd expect, and then countries that are landlocked. They also want navigation systems, and that depends on space assets. And you wouldn't have any of this without starting to explore space 60, 70 years ago. We make that point. People on Mars? Yes. Colonies on Mars? Not for me. You know, look, I've been to Greenland this summer. I say this often. It's a lot of work when you live where it's extremely cold. It's just a lot

of work to move around. And I'm not talking about Eskimos because they have access to all this protein. Eskimos traditionally hunt fish. So they have a remarkable diet that heretofore was considered quite healthy. Now they got all the sugar flown in from around the world. But when you go to Mars, there is nothing to eat. There are no fish. There are no apples. There are no orange trees. There's no nuts. There's no peanuts, no almonds, nothing, There's no nuts, no peanuts, no almonds, nothing, let alone vegan anything. It's just not there. The model for this, you can try it yourself, is go live in Antarctica, where it's very cold and everything you deal with, everything you use and everything you eat comes in from someplace else on a plane.

And so everybody, we want to have a science base on Mars in the same way we have a science base in Antarctica. But I don't think you really want to go there and set up a playground with swing sets and a maternity ward and elementary schools and things that you do in a regular community back here on Earth. Last thing, and it's a story that I have heard you tell many times, and you repeat on this show because it's worth repeating. I have no trouble repeating it. Let's repeat it again and again, over and over, repeating. It's about the number of stars in the universe. Oh, man. Oh, man. When I was a kid, my third grade teacher had told my older brother, and she told us, my class, that there are more stars in the sky

than grains of sand on the beach. And you start thinking about a beach. There's a lot of, there are a lot of grains of sand. Well, currently it's estimated that there are a hundred times as many stars as there are grains of sand on the earth, not on a beach on the earth. The extent, the magnitude of creation is literally hard to imagine. I think I might go impossible to imagine the number of stars and the number of other worlds there are. And then the number of other entities there may very well be out there is overwhelming. And so to get an appreciation for this, we explore space. And I claim that our ancestors, who were not driven to explore, never made it to be our ancestors.

They never made the cut. They got out-competed by the people who wanted to explore, who wanted to go over the hill and see what was on the other side and seek new resources and learn new things. And so space exploration is an exciting part of this. And it is part of the larger idea of science, of using our intellect and treasure to understand nature. And I can point out that any country that does not continue to innovate will fall behind economically with respect to the rest of the world. And innovation comes from science. That's where we get innovations. All the technology we're using to produce this podcast is a result of science. I guarantee you the food you eat today will be

made possible through agricultural innovations, which are based entirely in every way on the process of science. Hear, hear. You're wearing a certain pin in every one of those episodes. Heck yes. I am prideful about the Planetary Society, the world's largest non-governmental space interest organization based on exploration, so that citizens everywhere will know the cosmos and our place within it. Space rules. Carry on, Matt. Changing the world and now saving it as well. Thank you, Bill.

Thank you, Matt. That's Bill Nye, the science guy. He's back. He's on Netflix. 13 new shows. You can binge. As he says, turn them up loud. They're on all kinds of wonderful topics. And we have primarily today only talked about two of them, about space and hopefully more to come. It's a great show.

Bruce Betts is the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society, and it's time to hear from him about what's up in the night sky and all the other stuff we do with this traditional finish for the show. Welcome back. Hi, Matt. Fun time last week. We set a high bar because I thought that was a particularly good segment. So impress the

heck out of us. I hope there's something wonderful in the new supernova, something like that. Yes, somewhere there's a new supernova in the universe. I guarantee it. Too bad you can't see it. Yeah, he's right though. Well, what can we see? We can see planets. And if you have a telescope, you can see a couple of comets if you get a finder chart. But if you're just looking with your eyes, go ahead and check out beautiful Jupiter in the evening sky dominating over in the east. Got Mars still hanging on low in the west in the early evening. Saturn coming up in the middle of night. Pre-dawn Venus is just starting to party over there in the east in the pre-dawn looking super bright. We move on to this week in space

history. It was 2003 this week that the GALAX mission was launched by NASA. The Galaxy Explorer was operated until 2012 and gave us all sorts of views of hundreds of thousands of galaxies, measuring things like distance and star population in ultraviolet. I think they should have called it Galaxy Quest myself, but okay. I'll go with Explorer. The name was already taken.

Oh, yeah. I forgot. Alright, we move on to Random Space Fact. It was supposed to be a high-energy show. Sorry. Random space fact! That's more like it. Thank you.

A coronal mass ejection, or CME, is an unusually large release of plasma, charged particles, magnetic field from the sun, from the solar corona. Here's the real crazy fact. A large CME can contain a billion tons of matter that can be accelerated to several million kilometers per hour in a spectacular explosion from the sun sending it out into the solar system. Wow. And some of that matter comes this way, right? It does. CMEs will sometimes hit Earth and cause more exceptional aurorae and can cause communications problems and power problems

because of the charged particles and craziness. It's a glorious solar system. It is indeed. Speaking of which, the trivia contest. We asked you how many solar system moons are larger than Pluto. How'd we do, Matt? Very nice response. Kudos to Beth Mader. Now, get this. Not only is she a first-time entrant in the contest from Eden, Wisconsin, this was the first show she heard. She was a first-time listener, and she won the contest.

Wow. Statistically improbable. Very improbable. But Beth, you beat the odds. Congratulations, and we will get your prize package out to you soon. The actual answer, I'm going to let Dave Fairchild, our poet laureate, provide it. Pluto once was thought to be about the size of Earth, but as the years went by, it slowly lost a lot of girth. And as the measurements came in, the facts were getting

clearer. Seven of our moons had left her in their rearview mirrors. Not bad. Thank you, Dave. Seven. Correct, right? That is correct. From biggest to smallest, Ganymede, Titan, Callisto, Io, Moon, the Moon, Europa, and Triton. And then there's a big gap until you get to Uranus's moon, Titania, and Pluto fits in that gap, as does Eris. Here is the way Andrew Jones identified the moons. Andrew in Finland, he said, identified the moons, Andrew in Finland. He said, is this really the last rubber asteroid? Why did you tighten supply? Can you get more?

Triton, make that happen. And you can sell lean extras. I owe you one if you can. Europa, really great guy. I'll spare you the Callisto and Ganymede puns, he said. Wow, that's really punny. Well, they're puns. You know, they're supposed to hurt a little.

I like puns. I respect puns. I'm not down on puns. Alec Washington in Lenoka Harbor, New Jersey, was musing about these seven moons. Seven moons bigger than what used to be a full-fledged planet. In the eyes of many, it still is, of course. He says, makes you think maybe Kirby Runyon's definition of a planet might not be so bad. Kirby, you'd have to refer back to that show we did some weeks back about the redefining planets in our solar system. We got this. I'm not sure what to make of it. From Mark Little in the UK.

That figure of seven excludes, of course, the periodic Betz moon that is co-aligned with Earth's full moon. The radius of the Betz moon is said to eclipse even that of Ganymede. Wow. I don't know if that was an insult or a compliment. Yeah, I'm not sure either, but...

Hey, we'll go with compliment. Thank you. If it's an insult, you can moon him, of course. Oh, I don't think anyone wants that. Finally, this from Mark Raymond, the director and chief engineer for the Dawn mission, which is currently

circling Ceres still, and he's going to be back on the show very soon. He gave the most accurate answer of the bunch. The question was, how many moons in our solar system are larger than Pluto? Mark opened with, the answer is that we don't know, because we didn't say known moons, we said all the moons. But then he does say seven, and he explains that, you know, we're going to keep looking. There probably could very well be more out there. But anyway, thank you very much, Mark. Look forward to getting you back on the show. Now I think we're ready for another one.

What letter is used to classify the most powerful class of solar flares? As observed from near Earth in X-rays, just to be clear because there are different classification systems, but the one standardly used now, what letter is used to classify the most powerful class of solar flyers? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. I like this. And you're going to have this time until Wednesday, May 3rd. That's the 3rd of May at 8 a.m. Pacific time.

And we've got some good stuff still. We're going to give out a Planetary Radio t-shirt, of course, and a 200-point, that's worth a couple hundred dollars U.S., a 200-point itelescope.net account, which you can use to point any of those telescopes all over the world at anything in the cosmos you like. Maybe you'll find the next new supernova or that one that's going off right now that Bruce apparently has inside information about. We're done. All right, everybody, go out there, look up the night sky, and think about what creative material you would make a hard hat out of.

Thank you, and good night. As a pet peeve, the whole problem with this is that it's a hard hat. I think they should be made out of foam rubber, about, you know, about a five foot diameter piece of foam rubber. It'd be hard to get through doors, but it would really protect you very well. All right. Well, that's a good point. He's Bruce Betts, the director of science and technology for the Planetary Society. He knows a good point when he sees one, and he makes a lot of good points in his class. What's that

URL again? Planetary.org slash Betts class. B-E-T-T-S class. Almost over, right? But it's all archived. Two more classes, and it's archived. You can find all the classes at that URL. Great introduction to astronomy. And we'll talk to him again next week here on What's Up.

Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by its Sciency members. Daniel Gunn is our associate producer. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which was arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. I'm Matt Kaplan. Clear skies.