Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Buzz Aldrin and Andrew Chaikin on the Proposed NASA Budget

Episode Date: February 15, 2010

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Music Andrew Chaikin and Buzz Aldrin, this week on Planetary Radio. Music Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. The space community is still buzzing about the Obama administration's proposed budget for NASA. That's why we'll be talking to Buzz Aldrin, one of the first two humans on the moon, and space historian and chronicler Andrew Chaikin. Buzz and Andy will share some of their thoughts about what could be called the new American vision for space exploration.

Bill Nye will tell us about an opportunity to join the debate in a live webcast. And later today, I'll be keeping Bruce Betts awake very early on an Austrian morning to tell us what's up in the night sky and give away another Planetary Radio t-shirt. another Planetary Radio t-shirt. Before our weekly conversation with Emily Lakdawalla, let's take a moment to review other news that actually originated in space rather than in the hallowed halls of Washington. The last scheduled night launch of a space shuttle put Endeavour safely in orbit. As we prepare this week's show, the shuttle crew has delivered and installed the American Tranquility Module, though it includes the so-called Cupola, built and tested in Italy. How much would you pay for an hour or two in that observation tower with seven picture windows looking down at Mother Earth? Sounds like heaven

to me. Time to visit with the Planetary Society's Science and Technology Coordinator, who is also mistress of the Society's blog. Emily, we're going to focus on Saturn this time around. Good to be visiting with you again, and good to be visiting with your baby daughter in the background there as well. First of all, something that's already up on the blog, these beautiful images, which I tweeted about, they were so pretty, of Saturn's dual aurora, aurorae? Aurorae. Yes, it's hard to pronounce. And these images, you know, it's Saturn, but it wasn't

captured by Cassini, it was captured by Hubble, the advanced camera for surveys on Hubble, to be exact. And it's unusual to be able to see both aurorae at the same time. You have to be able to see both poles at the same time, and that only happens near equinox. Since Saturn went through its equinox in August, it was a good time for Hubble to observe and see both of these aurorae moving at the same time. And the other piece of news is direct from Cassini, in this case, really fresh off, hot off the press, or hot off the deep space network, I guess, some nice images of moons. off the press or hot off the deep space network, I guess, some nice images of moons. That's right. Cassini yesterday, yesterday being Saturday the 13th, had its closest ever flyby of Mimas, which is one of the smaller moons of Saturn, but it's famous for looking very much

like the Death Star. It's got this enormous crater on one side named Herschel. And Cassini has not had a close flyby of it before. So it's going to be great to see the images. At the time that I'm talking with you, I haven't seen those images yet. But on the way into flying past Mimas, Cassini flew past Calypso. Calypso is a tiny moon. It orbits in the same orbit as Tethys, which is one of the larger moons, in the forward Lagrangian point. It's a point where the gravity of Saturn and Tethys balance each other out. It's a teensy little thing. It looks like it's covered with fresh snow that occasionally has avalanches. And those images should be on my blog on Monday. Yeah, you failed to mention the

Death Star's waistband as well that it shares with Mimas. Oh, that's right. It does. Yeah. In fact, all of Saturn's icy moons have this funny blue colored waistband that seems to have to do with stuff that's falling in from far away from Saturn. All right, more stuff to look forward to then, obviously, on the blog. One more thing that we can say about Saturn, or rather Cassini, is join me in congratulating them on the extended, extended mission. Yes, the so-called Solstice mission. They're extended for seven more years, all the way out to 2017. And you know, somebody on unmannedspaceflight.com noticed that if Cassini's still alive, then we'll have orbiters at Saturn, at Jupiter, at Mars, and very likely also Mercury and Venus, as well as Earth and the moon. Wow. We'll have Linda Spilker back soon to talk about this extended mission and some of the

interesting stuff. How they're going to stretch the fuel to last this long, and I guess they're going to do some creative stuff. Emily, thanks again very much. Thank you. Emily is the Science and Technology Coordinator for the Planetary Society. She's also a contributing editor to Sky and Telescope magazine, and she joins us every week here with a review and sometimes a preview of the Planetary Society blog. Hey, hey, Bill Nye, the planetary guy here, Vice President of the Planetary Society blog. Hey, hey, Bill Nye the Planetary Guy here,

Vice President of the Planetary Society. And this week, Dr. Lou Friedman, the Executive Director of the Planetary Society and I, will be doing a Ustream video. This is a web-based video, and people from all over the world on Earth can ask us questions. And we're going to talk about space policy. We're

going to talk about the best use of our resources for exploring space. It's been quite controversial that the space shuttle program is finally being retired. Endeavour is aloft right now doing a fabulous job of making the space station more spacious. But we're going to talk about space policy. And what we want to hear is what you think. We want to hear your questions. See, he and I strongly believe that we should be going to new places, new exciting places, not just the Earth's moon. We want to go to the Lagrange points where the gravity is in balance. We want to go past that to asteroids. And the ultimate goal is to send people to Mars.

So tune in this Thursday. Tune in on the web to planetary.org, 11 a.m. Pacific time. That's 1900 GMT, Greenwich Mean Time, Coordinated Universal Time. And we'll talk for an hour or maybe a little more about space policy with Dr. Friedman, your vice president, me, Bill Nye, and you. And if you miss it, it'll be online. It'll stream. You can watch and listen anytime you like. We're going to discuss space policy and our future of exploration. I got to fly. Bill Nye, the planetary god. We visited with Andrew Chaikin several times,

and he's the author of a shelf full of books chronicling the exploration of space, including A Man on the Moon, the definitive history of the Apollo program. And he later worked with actor and producer Tom Hanks to turn his book into the award-winning HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon. His other credits are almost endless, including Voices from the Moon, last year's follow-on to A Man on the Moon. I found him on Skype late last week. Andrew, welcome back. Always a pleasure to get you back on the radio show, this time not to talk about your wonderful work, although it is highly recommended, but all of this stuff that's going on with NASA. I thought of you immediately as a historian of space exploration

and NASA itself. I wanted to get your feelings about this proposed budget and new plan of operations for the space agency. Well, thanks, Matt, for having me back. And yeah, you're right. It has definitely been an interesting time, to quote the age-old phrase. May you live in interesting times, yes. Absolutely. And we do, and we have been for some time now. I think one of the things that I have focused on as I've thought about this is that there are some misconceptions that seem to be out there in the discussion about the new budget that I think need to be clarified.

And I think one of the biggest problems is that people are characterizing this as Obama killing the moon program. And I really don't think that that is what's happening because there was no moon program, if you really look at it. The Constellation program, the whole so-called vision for space exploration, sounded good when George W. Bush got up and made his speech in January of 2004 because it sounded like NASA was actually going to be able to pull off a pretty ambitious program of activities, not only in low Earth orbit, but returning humans to the moon and then eventually going outward into the solar system without a big infusion of money, since that was not going to be happening. However, there was going to be some extra funding because of the fact that NASA had to keep flying the shuttle for a few more years, had to keep building the space station, so on and so forth. Well, we flash forward to now, and it's been very clear for a long time that the vision for space exploration was another one of those unfunded mandates. And NASA tried valiantly to do the best it could with really too little money to do this. But the fact of the matter is that when the Augustine Commission weighed in, the verdict was we aren't going to get there with the budget we have and the plan we have.

It just wasn't going to happen. Now, on top of that, you have the fact that the Ares 1, which was supposed to replace the shuttle as a way of taking humans to and from the station, the Augustine Commission again said, hey, it's not going to be even ready till 2017 at the earliest. So not only were we not going back to the moon with the resources we had, but we weren't even going to be able to close the gap between the shuttle and its follow on within a minimum number of years. In that context, what Obama has done makes a lot of sense. He's saying, wait a second, are you really telling me that we can't do this faster to, you know, coin a phrase, faster, better, cheaper? I'm always a little dubious of those three words strung together.

But I think that that's a reasonable goal. Yeah, just be careful who you quote. Exactly. And so, yeah, I don't want to put those words in Obama's mouth either. But, you know, the fact is, we do need to take another look at the plan and we do need to use the smartest application of minds and talent that we have and technologies that we can develop and do it in the smartest way we can. And I think that going to the private sector to try and do the transportation end of this to and from Leo might not be such a bad plan. I mean, they,

from what I've heard, places like SpaceX are making great progress. You know, there's no reason to assume that they're going to be able to do this without some serious setbacks that they'll have to overcome. That's just part of the game. But on the other hand, I think it's unreasonable to say they can't do it or they probably won't be able to do it. I don't buy that. I think that there's a lot of mischaracterization of what's going on. I want to see humans get back to the moon. I want to see them go beyond to Mars and to asteroids. I want to see us be able to finally lower that $10,000 a pound cost of just getting into low Earth orbit. You know what that's like is it's like you want to go into New York City and do all the cool things

that New York City has to offer, but they're charging you $5,000 to go over the toll bridge. So, you know, who can afford it? Well, it's that way with space exploration. The basic cost of getting that first couple hundred miles and getting up to 17,500 miles an hour has been the one thing that has hampered us ever since the space age began. And so we've got to finally find a way to skin that cap. Andy, we've got to do this again when we have more time, but thank you so much. Clearly, you've still got that passion for Mars and other places out there. You bet, and it's going to stay, and so I've got my fingers crossed like everybody else. Andrew Jakin is, of course, the author of A Man on the Moon,

which led to that wonderful television miniseries, From Earth to the Moon. He, though, is more recently the author of A Passion for Mars, Intrepid Explorers of the Red Planet, and Voices from the Moon, both highly recommended by yours truly. And we'll talk to him again sometime right here on Planetary Radio. Andy, once more, thank you. Thanks a lot, Matt. I'll be back in a minute with moonwalker and space visionary Buzz Aldrin. This is Planetary Radio. Hey, hey, Bill Nye the Science Guy here.

I hope you're enjoying Planetary Radio. We put a lot of work into this show and all our other great Planetary Society projects. I've been a member since the disco era. Now I'm the Society's Vice President. And you may well ask, why do we go to all this trouble? Simple. We believe in the PB&J, the passion, beauty, and joy of space exploration. You probably do too, or you wouldn't be listening. Of course, you can do more than just listen.

You can become part of the action, helping us fly solar sails, discover new planets, and search for extraterrestrial intelligence and life elsewhere in the universe. Here's how to find out more. You can learn more about the Planetary Society at our website, planetary.org slash radio, or by calling 1-800-9-WORLDS. Planetary Radio listeners who aren't yet members can join and receive a Planetary Radio t-shirt. Members receive the internationally acclaimed Planetary Report magazine. That's planetary.org slash radio. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. We turn now to a man who does more than follow space exploration history. Buzz Aldrin made history when he and Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon July 20, 1969.

Buzz has ever since been an outspoken participant in the shaping of space policy. He's also been a space entrepreneur and a tireless booster of exploration. And lest we forget, he earned the nickname Dr. Rendezvous for his pioneering work on the intricacies of meeting up with another spacecraft, along with his fascinating development of a spacecraft trajectory now called the Aldrin Cycler. I sat down with him at his Southern California home for a brief conversation a few days ago. You'll hear Buzz refer to the two rockets that were to be the backbone of the Constellation program, the Ares I and heavy

lift Ares V. Buzz and others are fans of using shuttle or space transportation system components, including the ET, or external tank. What were your thoughts when you got the news about at least what the Obama administration and Charles Bolden would like to do, the direction they'd like to go in with NASA. I was not at all surprised that a campaign that campaigned so strongly on change would make a change in a space policy put forth by the previous president, especially when it seemed to be running into trouble. I was against two boosters to go back to the moon. I would have much preferred the one booster, but used several of the same medium-sized booster, similar to what launches the shuttle right now. Instead of making one

much smaller and then another one much bigger, it hasn't turned out well at all. It's given me and I think many other people time to reevaluate. Are we really satisfied with going back to the moon and getting there 50 years after we were there in the last century? We have great experience 40 years ago and in the last four or five years to share with other people, to barter that valuable proprietary information to help the Chinese, help the Indians. And if they want to compete, fine. It's probably better to compete in initial designs than come up with a common way of carrying something out than it is to try and duplicate right down to the surface of the moon.

But however they want to do that, we need to take the preliminary steps, which I think is to strongly encourage inviting the Chinese and the Indians and others to be a part of the International Space Station. We're extending that up through 2020, and we need to do that to test the long-duration life support systems to be able to take human beings past the moon, way past the moon, to fly by comets, to spend some time station-keeping and perhaps touching down on a few asteroids. But most important is, to me, the most strategic location in the solar system for earthlings. And right now, that's Phobos.

That's the moon of Mars. And we need to put intelligence, intelligent controllers there that can control and assemble the equipment that will be needed four, six, eight years later when humans actually go directly from Earth to the surface of Mars and maybe join some few humans who are still at Phobos. I think three visits to Phobos of a year and a half apiece is a reasonable preliminary. We bring the first two year and a half visitors back and the third group waits there until the people come direct from the Earth. It sounds like a common sense

program to me. I can't think of anybody more qualified to be on the first settlement at Mars than the people who've been there in Phobos for a year and a half looking down at Mars. Our people in the future have to have a mind of their career is aimed toward being settlers,

colonists, to obtain the most benefit for Earth from settling the planet Mars. And we've got a lot of time, we we got 10 years anyway, before we really need to commit to that. So why not pursue a flexible path until a reaffirmation of this policy after the Obama administration? However, this administration can take advantage by initiating and describing a full two-phase program that has recessionary funding for 10 years and then reaffirms the destination that we want at that point. Hopefully, it's settlement at Mars, and hopefully we'll have a more healthy, encouraging economy to carry out these things. And if we want to maybe set a target date, I certainly don't see any reason why we can't get people on the surface of Mars preparing for

permanence by 2035. My schedule says we could do it by 2031, and that still gives us two more synodic periods to carry out launches in 33 and 35 to get to Mars. And it's something based on what I think the American people should be proud of, and that is following 30 years of landing on a runway, we should have a replacement for the shuttle that's a primary commercial replacement that is a lifting body runway lander backed up with a capsule that may evolve out of the cargo to the space station, cargo back. And maybe that capsule can be an alternative or maybe some other capsule can that comes along by some other company than SpaceX and Orbital Sciences. But I think we have a problem with the workforce, too. If we just terminate the shuttle immediately, then those people are going to be terminated to save money. Instead of having a follow-on, a smooth transition, and we give a little here, we give a little there to make it smooth.

It's not too late to add one or two shuttle missions stretched out 12, 15 months, or to take the present shuttle missions and stretch them out, two or three of them, for 12 or 15 months. two or three of them for 12 or 15 months, and then the workforce can be working on shuttle. But in between, they can be working on the quickest replacement for a heavy lift vehicle, which is four segment solids and the ET the way it is, and a side mount cargo. And we can eventually put the backup crew capability in line on the top of the tank, and we put the engines on the bottom of the tank. And that's an upgrade that comes along. And, of course, we can always replace the solid rockets with liquid rockets that are destined to become liquid reusable, liquid flyback boosters,

and we can replace the whole medium to heavy size reusable with a real heavy lift two-stage fully reusable by putting the larger tank into orbit and recovering the engines. So we have a big volume in orbit to do what we want with. All sorts of things could be done with a large ET or a larger volume in orbit. Buzz, it is always a pleasure. Thank you once again for joining us on Planetary Radio. So who's awake a little after 3 a.m. in Vienna, Austria, just so that he can come on the radio with us?

Radio and podcast. It's Bruce Betts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society. Hello, you poor guy. Hi. And why are you in Vienna? I am in Vienna attending some United Nations meetings representing the Planetary Society. It's all tied to near-Earth objects and coordinated international efforts, or at least trying to get international efforts coordinated for the near-Earth object threat. Well, thank you for that. You might just save the planet.

Who knows? In the meantime, we need to save you and get you into bed. Please tell us. What's up? Well, up in the night sky, we've still got Mars a few weeks after opposition, so you can check it out in the evening sky in the east. Still looking bright and reddish, still with bluish Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, off to the right.

But if you've been watching it over the last few weeks, you might notice that it's getting dimmer now. Mars, that is, not Sirius. And Saturn rising later, a little later in the evening, in the east, being high overhead at times, you know, like it is for me now. And that's the summary of our night sky roundup. On to this week in space history. It's been 20 years since Voyager 1 took the now-famous set of portraits

that include the tail-blue dot, the tiny picture of Earth taken from far above the solar system plane and even farther out in the solar system. You like that, don't you? I really do. I think it's one of the great icons of our time, all, what, one or two pixels of it? Yeah.

Now on to... Here's something I learned here on a related topic, because I'm attending larger, broader space meetings, as well as the more focused NEO meetings. I'm concerned space debris. Since 2007, the number of objects being tracked in low Earth orbit, the number of objects in low Earth orbit of decent size, centimeters across, has increased 62% just from 2007.

Wow. Amazing. But what perhaps is more amazing, what explains it, is almost all of them come from two events. One, the Chinese anti-satellite test, where they blew up one of their own satellites and spread debris all over. anti-satellite test where they blew up one of their own satellites and spread debris all over, and then the collision of the Iridium satellite and the Russian Cosmos satellite that spread thousands of chunks of spacecraft around.

Well, darn, that is a lot of junk. But the following is not. We move on to the trivia contest, and we asked you, who was it that is part of a contest run by the Planetary Society with Lego for NASA, and the NASA final decision, what nine-year-old girl submitted the name Spirit and Opportunity that ended up being selected, of course, to name the two Mars Exploration Rovers. How did we do, Matt?

Wow. Nice response once again. We're getting big, big responses lately to the show, and this one is going to win someone a Planetary Radio t-shirt. Specifically, first-time winner, it's Hristo, he says, pronounce the K,

Hristo, I'll just say Hristo Stavrev, who is in Bulgaria. First-time winner, as I said. His answer, Sophie Collis. Sophie Collis, a third grader in Scottsdale, Arizona, but she is actually, she was born in Siberia and lived in an orphanage and was adopted,

brought to the United States at the age of two. Can I read you just one line from her essay? I used to live in an orphanage. It was dark and cold and lonely. At night I looked up at the sparkly sky and felt better. I dreamed I could fly there. In America, I can make all my dreams come true. Thank you for the spirit and the opportunity.

And those are those twins that are still up there on the surface of Mars. So, Christo, we're going to send you that Planetary Radio t-shirt. Thanks for entering. All right, we move on to the next contest, and I ask you about another name, but in this case an acronym. The UN meeting format. The UN makes any one country's bureaucracy seem simple. And so I am here, and I'm on Action Team 14,

or more accurately, the Planetary Society. I'm looking at Near-Earth Object Threat for the working group on near-Earth asteroids for the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee for Technology and Science, well, something like that, of COPUS, C-O-P-U-O-S, in the context of the U.N., the United Nations, what does copious stand for? Go to planetary.org slash radio and find out how to enter. And you have until the 22nd of February, Feb. 22, to get us that answer. Would you spell copious one more time, please?

C-O-P-U-O-S. And, by the way, Action Team 14, is that the one with Aquaman or Batman? Totally Aquaman. He's so cool. I loved Aquaman. Hey, you go to bed now. Yeah, well, if people stop calling me, I will. All right, everybody, go out there, look up the night sky, and think about snowfall on palaces.

Thank you. Seriously, good night. Good night, Bruce, or rather, good morning. Bruce Betts is the director of projects for the Planetary Society, joins us every week, sometimes from far away on our planet, and very early in the morning for What's Up. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California and is made possible in part by a grant from the Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation.

Keep looking up. Thank you.