Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Buzz Aldrin and Other Martians

Episode Date: May 31, 2017

He walked with Neil Armstrong on the moon, but that may not be his greatest legacy. Buzz Aldrin was joined by other space stars at the recent Humans To Mars Summit.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Buzz Aldrin and others at the Humans to Mars Summit 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. We'll head back to that annual gathering of Martians for some of the conversations I had with its amazing attendees, including the man who walked on the moon with Neil Armstrong. We'll talk to Buzz about his real legacy. Bill Nye is back to wonder at the new images and science from Jupiter brought to us by the Juno spacecraft. And Bruce Betts will be at his most villainous as he presents the night sky.

We begin with the Planetary Society's Director of Space Policy, Casey Dreyer. Casey, great to catch you just before you leave for Washington, D.C. and business back there. We're going to have much to talk about on the upcoming Space Policy Edition, but just to give us an overview now, this budget is out from the White House. That's true. This is the annual president's budget request. It is the initial starting conditions for the year-long process, the kind of this interplay between Congress and the White House to finally produce an actual budget for the United States. We are a few months behind in this process because of the new administration coming in, putting their mark on

the work of the budget. And that was what was released last week. So again, I'm saying this is a proposal a lot because there's generally some pretty bad news in this budget for a lot of different sciences across the government. Cuts by up to a third, for example, is a very, very big cuts that are proposed. NASA, fortunately, is spared the vast majority of these cuts. It would see a roughly 3% cut from 2017. And planetary science even grows a little bit compared to last year. So I would say planetary science and NASA are bright spots. Pretty poor budget for science in the United States. If you're somebody who wants to see humans go to Mars, this is not such a great budget.

That's true. I think we're still on the same hand by the overall kind of dourness of this budget. Yes, I mean, it's a budget that keeps NASA on its current path. Nothing major really changes except for things that we knew in advance. The ARM asteroid redirect mission is gone. The surprise was canceling and basically ending NASA's education directorate. That's proposed to be gone. Things kind of move forward. The SLS and commercial crew are there and funded at reasonable levels.

But really, as you pointed out, there's no deep space habitat needed for a cislunar lunar gateway outpost or whatever NASA is calling it these days. There's no new start for a mission going to replace the telecommunications capabilities at Mars, a robotic mission. There's no real long-term investment in the Mars goal, which as usual is quite troubling to see because eventually we need to start investing in these technologies and capabilities if we are actually serious about getting to Mars. Just one more thing to mention, speaking of Mars, and that is this document that should be available just about the time a lot of people get this show. Part of the work that we do at the Planetary Society is doing original research and analysis,

and we have just released our latest paper with that. We're calling it Mars in Retrograde, a pathway to, you know, looking at restoring NASA's robotic Mars program. And we really take a deep dive into this idea that NASA has not been investing in the future of its robotic Mars program. And that feels weird to say, because, you know, NASA is building a flagship class planetary mission right now, the Mars 2020 rover. But the problem is nothing is coming yet in the future to either help get its data back to replace MRO or Odyssey at Mars. You have a bunch of Mars missions that don't have next generation versions coming up. And we look into why that is. So it's

very interesting. And we're going to kind of use it as a way to promote our advocacy here going forward next year. It's all about getting to Mars. Let's be serious about it. And much more about all of this, far more than we've had time for in this brief segment. When we bring Jason Callahan into the discussion for the June Space Policy Edition, Casey, I'm looking forward to that and hearing more about your trip to D.C. Oh, that's the least interesting part, but I'm sure we can talk about it if you'd like, Matt. He's Casey Dreyer. He is the Director of Space Policy for the Planetary Society, giving us this little overview of the budget that has just come from the White House.

Thanks, Casey. Thank you, Matt. On now to the CEO of the Planetary Society, Bill Nye, the science guy. Bill, welcome back. It's so good to be back. the science guy. Bill, welcome back. It's so good to be back. Gee, nothing happened while you were gone, except we got some pretty amazing shots of Jupiter. Oh, man, the South Pole. It looks like you're looking through a kaleidoscope or something.

Yes, yes. It's crazy. And these images were not possible until the Juno spacecraft got out there and one of its orbits took it over or close enough to the South Pole. They've had to slow that mission down because some fuel valves aren't working right. So they're on these big, long orbits that are 50 plus days instead of just 14 days. But nevertheless, the mission's happening. And the trick, which was amazing, is the radiation or all these charged particles held by Jupiter's magnetic field would destroy the electron or damage the electronics if you tried to stay in

orbit around Jupiter close so instead there's these big long orbits and it limits the exposure it's very cool and the titanium vault of electronics the The technology aside, the science is amazing. Instead of a magnetic field, expecting it to be akin to the earth, it's many, many magnetic fields radiating out in like spokes of a wheel. It's crazy. Yeah, it's incredibly complicated, which of course makes for beautiful science. It does. And it gets back to this thing that I know Scott Bolton, the principal investigators, wondered about for a long time is, can hydrogen exist like a metal? Does it behave like a metal? So at the core of Jupiter, there'd be this crazy yet unproven hydrogen core with metallic properties. Wow. And they're learning something about the core already too. And you know, most of the science is still to come.

That's right. It really is. Collecting data, yeah. So this is something that nobody else can do. I keep saying this, that space exploration is unique. I mean, it just brings out the best in us. There's no other discipline that has all these complicated problems solved at once. It's really amazing.

And full of surprises. Thank you, Bill. Thank you, Matt. That's Bill Nye, the CEO of the Planetary Society, talking Juno, Juno at Jupiter. Wow. We're going to go back to the Humans to Mars conference in a moment. I talked to a whole bunch of other interesting people there.

Just to have all eyes on me as my rocket shoots away. I could live a thousand years and never feel this way again. That's Peter Alexander singing a number from his rock opera, One Way Trip to Mars, at George Washington University, the site of the 2017 Humans to Mars Summit. I told you two weeks ago when we presented my conversation with the NASA Associate Administrators that we'd soon return to the H2M Summit, presented each spring by Explore Mars. When I wasn't on stage or standing in the audience hosting the H2M webcast, I was happily bouncing among the hundreds of Mars fans and sages in attendance. You're about to hear some of my conversations. I'm going to save Buzz Aldrin for last.

Up first is the man in charge of planetary science at NASA. A planetary scientist himself, Jim Green, has headed the division for an almost unheard of 11 years. You just led a terrific panel. Representatives from the United Arab Emirates, Japan, ESA slash Italy, could have had probably 10 more countries up there. I could have. You're right, indeed. Yeah, it's really unbelievable the way this world has woken up and said, Mars indeed is the destination of choice. Isn't it great? It is, it is.

You know, and in my little spiel, I tried to show that 2020, when that highway opens up, every 26 months for about a month and a half, it is going to be busy. I mean, we've got not only commercial ventures going at it, NASA going at it, ESA going at it, but China and the United Arab Emirates. And following that, as we get into that next decade, JAXA is going to. And I think as the rest of that decade shapes up, it's really going to be quite an exciting decade. Now, you know, in the panel, we answered questions back and forth. And one that's an important one is, what about the search for life?

As soon as humans get there, can they not only aid in that search for life? And the answer to that is yes. But shouldn't we know more about it before they arrive? And the answer to that is yes. Okay, so how are we doing that? Well, NASA's 2020 mission is going to core rock, get the context of each of the areas. We're going to probe inside the hole that we core, get some understanding of what that is, and then, of course, make decisions later to bring those rocks back and interrogate them in the laboratory.

And the rock has the history. And indeed, in that history, the mineralogy and the chemical elements that are in that. Life actually creates here on Earth its own minerals. It's because of life we get certain minerals. And so the rock record has records of the past of Mars, for which it may have been habitable at one time, it's all on the rock record. Now, in addition to that, you know, there might be life there today. And ESA's mission, Spectacular ExoMars Mission, also on that path going to Mars in 2020, is going to land and then go down two meters.

That is undiscovered country. It's really going to be a whole new ballgame. And when they bring that material up, it's going to go in there and analyze. One of them will be a NASA DLR analyzer called MOMA, which is the Mars Organic Molecule molecule analyzer. And what we're really looking for is organic molecules, those things that perhaps life created, and there'll be other measurements made at higher atomic mass units, and those things are going to be really exciting. So is that life? We're in the process of seeking signs of life. The concept of finding life is a tough one. I can't make a, I can't build an instrument and go find life. And the reason why is the astrobiologists made it really hard. When they defined life this way, life has three attributes. Metabolizes,

When they defined life this way, life has three attributes. Metabolizes, it reproduces, it evolves. I can't build an instrument and make that measurement. But there's a whole series of attributes that are associated with life. And that's what we're going after. We're seeking those signs of life. So what are those attributes? Actually, we call it the ladder of life.

Finding habitable environments. Check that off. ladder of life. Finding habitable environments. Check that off. Mars is full of past habitable environments. And below the surface might be a whole new world. Might that be habitable? As you go up that ladder, it's complex organic molecules. So Curiosity is finding them. Also, we're going to assume ExoMars is going to find them too.

And then those biomolecules, certain molecules that life makes. Then there's also corality. Then there's also pigmentation. Then there's also amino acids. Then there's also lipids. Then there's also RNA and DNA. So as you walk up that ladder, it's more and more complex. There's also some new paradigms on how we should approach looking for life. Where the complexity of the molecules

can be so complex that only life could build those. You know and that's another approach. So as we get closer to the time of actually making those measurements we're going to get information back that will help us interpret those. And right now, everything that we've gotten so far indicates that Mars could have been habitable in the past. It had everything going for it. And in fact, below the surface, it may be habitable today. We just don't know that, but we're going to find out. And that'll be before humans arrive. So 40 years after Viking, those amazing ahead-of-their-time landers, we know so much more now, and I assume our instruments are so much better, we can avoid those tantalizing but ambiguous results. Yeah, absolutely. Viking landed in modern Mars,

laid on a surface, bathed in ultraviolet light, hammered by cosmic rays. It didn't land in the ancient shoreline. We didn't even know Mars had an ocean in the past. It didn't land in an area where the erosion brings out material that actually isn't that old, but also protected from that environment that it's been in. So that's where one goes and looks. We now know where to go and look for just the right stuff. You know, Viking had tough enough trouble landing, you know, as it did in an area that it thought was relatively safe, but it turned out it wasn't. They were both, you know, Viking 1 and 2 were very lucky, but those safe areas are not where we need to go. We need to go to areas that are much tougher to get to.

And that new knowledge enables us, I think, to go to the right areas and give that next big boost in our understanding of the habitability and the evolution of Mars over time. Exciting stuff to look forward to. In the meantime, Curiosity is climbing those hills. It is. It is. In the meantime, Curiosity is climbing those hills. It is. It is. And as it goes up, it's finding all kinds of difference in the mineralogy.

The mineralogy record is really fantastically complicated in each and one of these areas. You know, there's also areas that may look like where there's RSLs in Mount Sharp itself. look like where there's RSLs in Mount Sharp itself, you know, where there perhaps is water leaking out from crevices and flowing down into the, you know, down the side of it. This is that somewhat controversial evidence of the lineae of surface water, liquid water. Sure, correct. It could be just slides in this area where Mount Sharp is, but may not. We're getting to the point over this next six months, we'll have a view of that where we could actually view it and look at it and sort

of make a determination whether we want to go over to it or not. And of course, we'll have to work the planetary protection issues that are associated with that because Curiosity wasn't designed to go to an area where there might be some aspect of flowing water, liquid water. But it's been on the surface for several years now, bathed in ultraviolet light and hammered by cosmic rays. And the wheels, if they had any microbes, they're kilometers behind, left in the dust. So we might be able to convince planetary protection we could get close, maybe zap it with our laser or something. That's the hope. That's a problem to look forward to, you know, getting those wheels wet. Wouldn't

that be something? It would be. At the end, the bottom end of an RSL where water might accumulate, I'd just love to go over there and see what's in that. Still pretty excited about this stuff. Still having a good time, Jim. Yeah, absolutely. You bet. I get the best job at NASA. There's no question about it. Thank you for doing it and thanks for talking to us. My pleasure. NASA Planetary Science Division Director Jim Green. I went to the H2M lobby shortly after hearing Jim's International Panel of Mars Explorers. That's where I introduced myself to one of his panelists. My name is Saeed Al-Gergawi. I am the program director of the Mars 2117 and as well as the mission strategist for Emirates Mars mission called HOPE. I was just telling you that we don't do enough reporting

on all the nations that are developing space programs. The UAE, the Emirates, is very prominent among them. Talk about some of these ambitious plans that the nation has. Well, other than the Mars mission that we have that should launch in 2020 to study the Martian atmosphere, which was announced just three years ago. So the deadline, usually space missions have 10 to 12 years of planning to launching. We had less than half of that, five years. This week, the team is already in the major milestone, which is the critical design review. The way we do things is a bit different,

which allows us to sort of cut down on time. We announced about a month ago the Mars 2117 program of contributing to humanity's efforts in the interplanetary domain and setting up the 100-year plan enabling the UAE to contribute to those efforts. The region that the UAE is in is the Arab world, which has over 100 million youth and around 35% unemployment. Last week, there was the Arab Youth Survey, which surveyed youth from all across the Arab world. Where would you like to live?

Which country would you like your country to emulate? For six years running, it's been the UAE. And when asked why, it's because of the endeavors that we have made in science and technology. So instead of making this 100 million youth with 35% unemployment a negative thing, which has been occupying the news lately. Everywhere, yes. Yeah, and we want to create a positive impact from it to show them that through space exploration, you can create hope for your country, for your citizenry, and as well for the future, that you can play

a part in humanity's ever-growing interest into the cosmos. And space has this power to inspire among all of humanity. Yes, yes. And it's the universal aspect of all civilizations. They've all looked to the stars, to the And it's the universal aspect of all civilizations. They've all looked to the stars, to the heavens, for one reason or another. Thank you very much, Saeed. I'm glad I caught you. My pleasure. Saeed Al-Khagawi of the United Arab Emirates Mars 2117 program and its ambitious Hope Orbiter, slated for launch in 2020. Another panel at the 2017 Humans to Mars Summit had the intriguing title, Diplomacy and Space.

I caught Rebecca Kaiser as she came off the stage. Rebecca heads the National Science Foundation's Office of International Science and Engineering. A lot of people may not realize that science has to be diplomatic in many situations. You made some very interesting points, and you come at this, though you were with the NSF now, you were with NASA, you were with the Office of Science and Technology Policy. So you've been able to look at this from several different angles. I have. So I have looked at international cooperation from three different angles. This is the way I

look at it. When I was at NASA, I looked at cooperation based on mission. NASA is a very mission-based organization, and so there was a specific objective in international collaboration that we were all working towards. We had to decide on what that objective was, but then we worked towards it. At OSTP, the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, we were dealing with the policy of international collaboration. We were looking at the constraints on cooperation and how to address those constraints and make it easier and better for us, the U.S., to work with our international partners. And now at NSF, I'm dealing with the science of

cooperation. I'm dealing with researchers themselves wanting to collaborate with one another and ways that I can help make those connections with our partners and enable that cooperation. So it's a bottom-up, more project-based type of cooperation. So it's a bottom-up, more project-based type of cooperation. The statement that you made that really caught my ear was that we innovate better when we collaborate more internationally. Yes. So we have proof of the fact that we innovate better through international collaboration, and I'll tell you how. We have done two studies. The first study is the number of publications that involve international collaboration is greater. When there's an international partner,

our U.S. scientists publish at a greater rate than when they're just collaborating with U.S. scientists. Second, we've done a connection with the patents database. And we have found that there's an increased rate of getting patents when a U.S. researcher is collaborating internationally than when a researcher is collaborating in the U.S. alone. It's amazing. This would seem to argue against the feeling by some people in this town that technology and innovation are things to be carefully protected and kept away from other nations. I believe that we need to innovate through working with other nations. It brings different perspectives. Also, we have to realize in the U.S. that we have wonderful facilities here.

We have wonderful people here. There are lots of people who are maybe even better in particular fields internationally, and that's growing. I'll give you an example. In Canada, our neighbors to the north, they are investing $1 billion a year in quantum research. That's fabulous. We know that quantum research and quantum science are the future. Like quantum computing and so on. Exactly. We actually had a scientist speak at our dinner last night who estimated that the future of the economy will be based on quantum, and he thinks that quantum technologies will feed into 35% of the economy in the future. We want to then work with those who are investing in this research,

and they're doing that in Canada, they're doing that in Europe, they're doing that internationally, and so that's something that we need to take advantage of here in the U.S. Is there an example of international scientific collaboration now that you can point to that might be a model for what, of course, we've been talking about here, which is getting humans to Mars? Sure. So I think it depends a lot on, we were talking in the panel about the difference between building a facility itself and flying a facility and operating almost an international ecosystem in space. When you're talking about the ladder, the international

ecosystem, a really good example, two examples I'll talk about. The first is CERN. The NSF and the Department of Energy in the U.S. invest in CERN. It has international partners across the globe, and it works incredibly well. We have researchers using these facilities, but focusing on their particular research question. Lots of things have come out of CERN already. An example, of course, is the Higgs boson. We are finding new, tiny little subatomic particles through our international collaboration at CERN. The second example, of course, is Antarctica. That's something where, again, it's an international ecosystem of science. It's something where we all go. We focus on our research priorities and projects. We share facilities. They're provided by partners across the globe. And then we all gain from the science together. These are things that I think we can focus on for international space cooperation.

The challenge is going to be, of course, who does what, what the role of government is going to be, as opposed to academia and the private sector? And then how do we balance national interest and international interest? And those are things that are all big questions, but I think they're all solvable in this international space ecosystem. Before I close out, one other possible example, though it's not entirely a science effort, the International Space Station. Yes, the International Space Station cannot be underestimated. It is one of the most amazing international engineering feats ever.

We are flying this incredible thing with all these international powers, and internationally we're all using it. We need to focus more on the science and the science output that's coming from the space station. That's something extremely important. I think when we're talking about future international space cooperation and space exploration, we need to move beyond a facility that is flying in space to, again, what I'm talking about, this whole ecosystem in space. How are we going to do things in situ on the ground in space? How are we going to do things floating above planets in space? And how are we going to work together to get there? These are all things that are more of a challenge, I think, than dealing with a facility itself.

Although, again, we can't underestimate the amazing cooperation from the space station. You opened your portion of the panel that took place by saying that you really enjoy, you really like these human-to-Mars gatherings. Why? The human-to-Mars gatherings are really refreshing for me. Number one, most of us who work in policy, we spend our days focusing on a particular specific policy matter. And the humans to Mars conferences let us get outside of that box and think big and think about this amazing future that's going to happen of getting humans to Mars. And we're able to talk about our different perspectives and the different issues to

get there. It's also a wonderful thing for me now that I'm at NSF because I get to reunite with many of my colleagues in the space world. And so that's a fabulous thing as well. Thank you, Rebecca. Of course. My pleasure. Rebecca Kaiser of the National Science Foundation. More of my conversations at the Humans to Mars Summit, including Buzz Aldrin, are just ahead. This is Planetary Radio. Where did we come from? Are we alone in the cosmos? These are the questions at the core of our existence.

And the secrets of the universe are out there, waiting to be discovered. But to find them, we have to go into space. We have to explore. This endeavor unites us. Space exploration truly brings out the best in us. Encouraging people from all walks of life to work together, to achieve a common goal. To know the cosmos and our place within it.

This is why the Planetary Society exists. Our mission is to give you the power to advance space science and exploration. With your support, we sponsor innovative space technologies, inspire curious minds, and advocate for our future in space. We are the Planetary Society. Join us. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. This week, looking back at the 2017 Humans to Mars Summit held once again in Washington, D.C. Marsha Smith was another major participant in this year's summit. Marsha is best known as the creator and head honcho at SpacePolicyOnline.com,

a highly respected source of space policy news based in the U.S. Capitol. You got to talk about some of the same points that you made in this. Here's the shameless plug. In this month's Space Policy Edition, our monthly podcast, you had that long conversation with Casey Dreyer that I highly recommend. You made some of the same points on stage. And a lot of it had to do with you have seen talk about the vision for humans to Mars for a lot of years, haven't you? A very long time, four decades. You're still seeing some of the same challenges?

Yes, so people have great ideas, and there's a consensus on the destination, which is Mars, but there's not consensus on how you get there, what are the stepping stones to get there. And I think that as long as the space community is fragmented into all these different pillars, you know, well, it's got to be Mars or bust, or it's got to be, no, we got to do it this way, or you have to use this rocket, or we

have to use that rocket. I think it's really going to impede the entire effort. I think that for it to happen, whether people want to do it in 2033, I'm not a big fan of bumper sticker missions like 2033, but for it to happen at all, there has to be a way to bring the community together to agree on the stepping stones. And that has been lacking for all of these decades. I don't know how to fix that, but I think that that's what's really necessary if this is going to happen. Haven't you seen or have you seen any consolidation in just the last few years? We talked to a number of people who seem to think things are getting better. In terms of the stepping stones, I don't. There's still the

moon faction and the Mars faction. The people who want to go to Mars and think you don't need to go back to the moon and the people who insist that you must go back to the moon if for nothing else than to test the systems before you send it as far away as Mars and others who want to actually stay on the moon permanently to do resource extraction and use the water ice and everything. So, I mean, there are still those factions, and I have not seen any coming together of those two points of view in all these decades. And I think that that really is a detriment to the overall effort. The moon people agree that you want to go on to Mars. They just feel that the moon is a critical step in that.

Well, you are certainly in a good position to provide that assessment of where we stand because this is the stuff you follow. As my colleagues, Jason Callahan and Casey Dreyer, said, introducing you on that Space Policy Edition show, they rely on SpacePpolicyonline.com for a lot of the information they need to get their job done as advocates. Tell me a little bit about what you do with that site.

So I spent 31 years on Capitol Hill at an organization called the Congressional Research Service that provides objective, nonpartisan research and analysis for the members of the Committee of Congress. And my website is very much in that mold. It's an objective and nonpartisan research and analysis for the members of the Committee of Congress. And my website is very much in that mold. It's an objective and nonpartisan website. It doesn't try to tell people what to think. It just provides information so people can be more informed so that they can make up their own minds.

I don't try to tell them what they should think. They're all smart people. They can figure out what they think. But it's a way of informing them mostly about what is going on in space policy, a lot of it inside the Beltway. But I do also cover foreign programs. I cover military and commercial and civil domestic programs. So I invite anyone to come to the website. It's free and see what's there. And I have some fact sheets if people want to know what's going on with the NASA budget or the NOAA budget on Capitol Hill. I have fact sheets with nice tables and everything. So I hope it's very useful. People tell me that it is.

Did you imagine 30, 40 years ago that you were going to end up being this resource or providing this resource? Well, no, I never imagined doing a website because 34 years ago... Didn't exist. So my career, which has been a very long career, has gone through all these technological changes. You know, back in the day, fax machines were big things, and now people don't even have them anymore. So you sort of have to stay up with the times. But I did fall into a career, it wasn't planned or anything, of providing objective nonpartisan information, and it seems to be what I am meant to do. So that's what I continue to do. What do you think is the function of gatherings like this,

the Humans to Mars Summit, and other similar meetings? Well, I think it's a way for a broader community to hear what's going on because I think if you're really enmeshed in this and you're reading Aviation Week and Space Policy Online and Space News, you probably know a lot of what is going on here today, but not many people do that. And so it's a way really to get the information across to the people who are here in the audience and the people who are watching the webcast to get up to date on what the current thoughts are and if they're here

through their questions to convey their points of view. So I think it's a very good way to get everybody talking about what's going on. But as I said, I think the real key to move us forward on the program is to reach some kind of cohesiveness on what the steps are going to be. I'm not sure how to do that. I'm not sure the conferences will do that. Are you optimistic? I am not pessimistic. But I have seen this movie many times.

And so we'll just have to see how far it goes. There's an old saying that a vision without resources is just a hallucination. And so a key to this is how much money anyone is willing to put into it, whether it's the government or the private sector or whatever. And so we're just going to have to wait and see. Let's all hope that we move from hallucination to reality. Thank you, Marcia. My pleasure. Thanks so much.

Again, it's spacepolicyonline.com. If you want to know what's going on with the stuff that is probably much more important than the technological challenges about exploring our solar system and specifically getting humans to Mars. Thanks so much. Marcia Smith of SpacePolicyOnline.com. If humans are going to reach Mars, they'll get there thanks to the hundreds or thousands of companies creating a vast array of vital hardware and systems, ranging from rockets down to tiny fasteners. I've been running into the leader of one of those companies for years. Hey, my name is Grant Anderson. I am the president and CEO of Paragon Space Development Corporation, a small business that specializes in life support in extreme environments.

So space being the ultimate extreme environment, that's one place we play. And Grant, we are long overdue, as you know, for a conversation about how we're going to keep people breathing on Mars and on the trip there and back. Maybe I'll come back to that in a moment. But you just came off the stage. You moderated this panel about small businesses. I don't even think of Paragon as that small a business, but I guess compared to the Boeings of the world, you moderated this panel about small businesses. I don't even think of Paragon as that small a business, but I guess compared to the Boeings of the world, maybe you are.

Oh, no, we're squarely in the qualifications for a small business. Paragon at its height, there's been about 90 people, and we're actually around 45 right now. Small businesses, the thousands of them that have always supported the space program, are they any less essential than they've ever been to getting us out there? No, I would say they're becoming more and more essential, especially as we see a lot of vertical integration now in the new space market. Companies are trying to build everything themselves. Well, they're finding out very quickly that's good for the first generation,

but when you want to do the subsequent generations, it's very hard to do that. That's why Ford isn't vertically integrated anymore. It's why Boeing doesn't build every single part of the aircraft. Because in order to stay up with the technology and the industry in general, you have to spread the risk and spread the ability to respond quickly among many different entities that you're subcontracting with. There's this challenge of integration when you have bits and pieces coming from hundreds, perhaps, of subcontractors. And obviously, that's the responsibility of whoever's at the top, NASA, Boeing, whatever. But I wonder how that works for folks at your level. Yeah, well, it becomes a requirement. The thing is to get the definitions down and right.

You know, that's what a good systems engineer is about, get the requirements right, get the interfaces right, and settle down on that. We see that as a requirement then for what we do. And the idea is, for Paragon at least, we bring a technology. We're always thinking about how it fits into our customer's overall system. And so consequently, we know the answers on those interfaces probably better than they do. So we've always found that the fastest way to get the interfaces right is to have a nice customer review with the interfaces and get it down right away. And then don't change it if you want to keep it the same price. So when we go to Mars, when people go to Mars, there are going to be thousands and thousands of individuals and hundreds of companies that make it happen.

Yeah, there are. And the question is getting all that to come together at the right time. That is really the miracle of modern business in general. You know, the millions of parts coming together from all over and all having to work together. And that's what engineering and systems engineering and just good configuration control is all about. Back to that other topic that we need to take more time for. Are we figuring out how we're going to help people breathe all the way to Mars and back? Yeah, there are definitely technologies coming along. I know during my panel, Jen mentioned MOXIE, which is the converting CO2 to oxygen out of the Martian atmosphere.

However... That's the experiment that'll be on the 2020 rover, right? That'll be on the 2020 rover, and all disclosure, Paragon lost that competition to another company. We actually came in second, or maybe third, I'm not sure, but we did not come in first, which is ultimately, that's the only thing that matters, right? But the integration worries Paragon a lot. It's how much can you put these things together and start them running? Most of the problems with the life support system at Space Station was the integration issues. And frankly, integration issues that didn't really come up until they launched it. Now, you can try to solve as much on the ground, but that becomes a long-term science experiment. You don't necessarily have multiple generations to do this.

People are very anxious to get to Mars. So that means you've got to get things flying and get things flying and put together pretty much like you want to fly so you can get some real time under your belt. The thing about life support systems distant from almost any other subsystem is you can't accelerate failure. You know, biological fouling doesn't happen any faster because you want it to. You know, the different deterioration we see in materials and fluid systems associated with the inside of the spacecraft. They just don't accelerate. They just happen over time. So you've really got to get the time in.

I think the first group we send to Mars and back, a 1,000-day mission or whatever it's going to be, we want to have a good 2,000, 3,000 days worth of operation before we go light the candle and commit somebody to going to Mars and back. And right now, if you start backing up from 2033, that means we have to start testing now and with integrated systems very soon from now in order to get enough heritage and enough pedigree in the testing so that we are sure that the people are not going to have a very slow, cruel death on the way to Mars back. are not going to have a very slow, cruel death on the way to Mars back.

So what does this say, in your mind, about NASA's plans to do some of this testing a lot closer to home, near the moon? Well, and that's it. When the cislunar-type architecture came out, I was really pleased to see that because there are things that you need to get out there and do the long term, and that's what NASA's now doing with the space station a lot. In fact, we have an experiment going up next year in 2018 for water recovery. And one of the reasons they're trying to do is get those things up on station and get the real tests and the real environment with the zero gravity. The cislunar I saw is as a good step to do the cislunar stuff

because it forces you to do longer, longer duration stuff. You have a mental difference when you're 30 minutes from the ground or when you're three days from the ground. It really makes a difference in how you think about things. So I'm really happy to see the cislunar architecture coming out, and we're looking forward to providing a lot of hardware for that. Before I let you go, and since you brought it up, that water recovery question. Compare the current performance, the percentage that we get to recycle to what we're going to need to do. And water is the big one because it's dense, it's heavy. The less you recycle, the more you have to carry with you and it's heavy stuff to launch. Right now, state-of-the-art space station is anywhere depending on how you measure it, 65 to 79 percent of the recovery. So in other words, for every pound of urine you put out, you recover about

65 to 70% of the actual water. Which sounds pretty good. Well, it sounds pretty good, except for when you're talking multiple days in the average body processing two to five kilograms of water, it adds up very quickly. The Paragon technology takes that to 98%. The only water you're not recovering is the ones that are bound really strongly in the salt crystals. Everything else is taken back. Really, when Paragon's system gets done processing urine, you have a bag of salt. You really do.

Not the type of salt you would put on your steak, but you really do have a bag of salt and calciums and a few other things. All right, this is very encouraging. We're getting there. We are getting there. And that's the water. And now recycling air is the next big thing, and we're working with that. We just announced a teaming agreement with Honeywell on some stuff, and they have some great CO2 recovery and other recovery technology that we think is going to go there.

Grant Anderson, president and CEO of Paragon Space Development Corporation. Of all the VIPs and space celebs at the 2017 Humans to Mars Summit, one stood supreme. Buzz Aldrin was a constant presence, asking probing questions from the audience when he wasn't on stage. At 87, he looks like someone who is fully capable of leading the party when we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 in just two years. I sat down with Buzz backstage at H2M with two burning questions. The first had to do with his invention of what are commonly known as Aldrin cyclers, the trajectories that can cycle virtually forever between two objects like the Earth and Mars or Earth and the Moon. Here's part of his answer. And I've always wanted to ask you, whether you think the work that you have done on cycling orbits

might someday be considered as big a part or maybe a bigger part of your legacy than what you did on the Moon? I really do. Because, you know, I sort of pioneered going to MIT and and I already had a pretty good idea that we didn't seem to know how to do rendezvous and there were people that wanted to come screaming in and turn on the big engine and and do a big braking and direct descent. And then there was McDonald Douglas. They had a scheme where they were going to come in from different directions and look at the calculation for a rendezvous in 270 degrees.

So they wanted to just look at what the computer calculated. When it got to a minimum, you fired the engine. You had no idea what kind of path you were going to be on. So backup techniques did not work too well. Come roaring in with a big engine and then modulate this. It doesn't apply to a lot of what I envisioned. It was intercepting a tow target or a fighter intercept in a standard way. So I looked at what are the standard

trajectories and that was MIT rendezvous. And I carried that into, and nobody in NASA was doing that sort of thing. So it won the competition for the final. So you can set yourself up in a lower circular orbit. The other guy is going this way, but a rotating coordinate frame. You drive up like this. And it's the same whether you're both in elliptic or you're both in circular, as long as it's not too deviating. I'm sorry our audience won't be able to see you with your hands demonstrating what we're talking about in space. Yeah, I know. Well, it was looking

at analogies that make something easy. And it was not my idea, but it was an understandable one that when we left for the moon, the guys calculated it'd be a good idea if anything went wrong, we could just not make the orbit insertion and come back on a free return. Okay, if you do come back on a free return, you're going to swing around the earth again and go back out again maybe and this is what you thought of that nobody else had thought of the moon ain't going to be there it's going to be over here so you go out a certain amount 10 days and you go out 10 days again it's going to be over here but now the next time it's seven and a half plus ten plus ten that's a month it's going to be right where you want it

well, you have a lot of control over that there are other ways of Of doing repeating things back and forth There's a neat way of going to the moon and coming over the top called a backflip maneuver Where you intercept the moon 180 degrees later, half a month later. There was an interesting guy at Ball Aerospace, Chauncey Upoff, and he and I, of course, reveled in our unusual thoughts about lunar cyclers. So I briefed this to NASA in 1985. This was something for tourist adventure travel.

It was not designed. John Hubold, who was my great role model, an engineer, came along and said, Von Braun's way of a big rocket and a big spacecraft go do everything. He needed a Nova rocket. Which never got built. He couldn't do it, so two Saturn Vs. But John Hubel from Langley said, if you look at the weights, you can carry everything along with one.

And John has been my role model. And so now, in the last couple days, I found out that Langley is doing things that fit so nicely into what I'm trying to do, which now puts Langley and me as a better way of doing things than the big SLS. It was two solid rockets a better way of doing things than the big SLS. It was two solid rockets taken from the shuttle, the external tank. That's 1970s technology. You and I are taxpayers. We don't want to pay for that.

And I'm not going to make friends that way, but I hope they will be thinking and understanding. I'm not out. I want to give them the very best. I want all the things that that company, Boeing, is doing with the ISS, I want them to do it again with the new, a cycler, and every cycler

that comes along. I'm learning the game a little bit. You are. Very well. Political realities. Well, it still runs up against what my son who's a corporate guy

international policy monk. He's a good one. I've heard him speak. Yeah. He says, Dad, you can't pick winners. I said, why not? I can do a better job than the people massive that are going't pick winners. And I said, why not? I can do a better job than the people at Masset that are going to pick them. Because I can see the outcome.

You could have relaxed, had the easy life after 1969. But here, almost 50 years later, you're still fighting for this stuff. I don't know anybody else who brings more passion to it than you. You know, somebody says, you want to go dancing with the stars? I've never heard of it. What do I have to do? Well, you have to learn how to dance. Oh, okay.

I'm not a dancer. We played Fly Me to the Moon and a few other things. Got to meet some interesting... But now, in a lot of places, I'm known more for Dancing with the Stars or The Simpsons or 30 Rock. Yep. Well, you know, where did 30 Rock come from? 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

That's where my father used to work when he was with Standard Oil New Jersey. When I grew up, his office was in 30 Rockefeller Plaza. But maybe in 100 years, with people cycling to Mars and back on a regular basis, you might be best known for that. There'll be better ideas. I'll share just one more small slice of my conversation with Buzz. It came as he talked about his sense of the absurd, how it can generate innovation, but also how it can entertain. His example took us to the moon as he and Neil prepared to lift off. Houston says, as we're getting ready, we've solved the

circuit breaker problem, we're getting ready to leave, and I know that Gene Kranz is going around, he's going to come to the last, and he's going to say, Capcom, we'll go for liftoff. Okay? The guy is going to say, Tranquility Base, you're cleared for takeoff. Roger Houston, we're number one on the runway. That's pretty good. That's absurd. No, but that took me a little thinking about.

But when you can get two absurdities. Developed a knack for doing that, and I didn't know what I was doing until about a year ago. I'm thinking out of the box. I'm thinking of absurd things all the time. It's not too late. Keep it up, Buzz. But I've got to remind people to try and do that themselves. But you do.

You do. And keep it up. Buzz Aldrin at the 2017 Humans to Mars Summit. Many, many thanks to Explore Mars, the organization that pulls off the summit each year and does much more to bring the red planet closer. And thanks to Peter Alexander. You can hear more of his terrific rock opera at www.onewaytriptomars.us Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. The Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society is Bruce Betts.

And he is here to tell us once again about the night sky and more. So much more. Welcome. Welcome. Jupiter up in the early evening in the south, southeast. On June 3rd, it will be hanging out next to the moon, making for a lovely sight. And you can also, on any evening, see Saturn coming up in the east in the early evening, looking yellowish. Much dimmer than Jupiter, but still brighter than anything else in its region of the sky.

And then in the pre-dawn east, we've got Venus super, super bright. And if you're really lucky right before dawn, you might be able to see Mercury far below it, but it's going to be tough. All right, we move on to this week in space history. It was 1966 this week that Surveyor 1, NASA's first soft lander on the moon, soft landed on the moon successfully. You ever notice how really spindly, how there's just barely anything to Surveyor 1? Yeah, yeah. But it worked out.

They had a tremendous success rate in Surveyor. Terrific success. And they learned that when Neil stepped on the moon, he wouldn't sink into the dust. Exactly. All right, before you get to the random space fact, we have a request. It comes to us from the Netherlands, and Marcel John Craigsman, a regular listener, asked Bruce Betts to do a James Bond villain impression for the random space fact.

Are you up to it, sir? Probably not, but I will try. Mr. Bond, random space fact. I think you nailed it. That was very good. Did sound a lot like your evil twin, Ekerb, from the alternate universe, but it was good. Back to the actual random space fact. Back to the actual random space fact.

Jupiter would need to be about 75 times as massive in order to fuse hydrogen and be a star. Well, the aliens took care of that in 2010. Sorry, I should have just started from that point. Yeah. Get up to date, man. Read the Wikipedia. Oh, sorry, man. All right, we move on to the trivia contest.

And I asked you, what near-Earth asteroid will the Hayabusa 2 mission visit and return samples from? How'd we do? Lots of people. I didn't think I saw anybody with the wrong answer this time. And some very creative answers as well. We won't have time for all of them, of course, but a few. First, though, to identify our winner, I think he's been waiting a long time for this, Brennan Lutkuet. He didn't give me a pronunciation. He just repeated his name. Brennan Lutkuet. We'll make up for my mangling of his name by telling him he won a Planetary Radio t-shirt and a 200-point itelescope.net astronomy account. Same prizes we're going to have this time around. iTelescope, that worldwide network, non-profit network of telescopes,

that Brennan will be able to use to explore the cosmos from Austin, Texas. So congratulations, Brennan. And he said 162173 Ryugu, Ryugu, the name given to it more recently. Is he correct? That is correct. Well, Brennan, congratulations. By the way, he also adds thanks, ladies and gentlemen, for your diligent and detailed work. Splendid. Which sounds like something a Bond villain would say. Splendid. We did get a bunch of other nice entries. Daniel Kazard, who sends us very creative graphics periodically.

He was talking about the myth behind this, which we heard about from a lot of people. Japanese myth, not surprisingly, Japanese mission, a fisherman who was brought by a turtle to an undersea palace and was given a present while he was there, a box, and brought it back to the surface, which I guess sort of represents Hayabusa 2 bringing something back to Earth. Although Daniel adds that when he got back to his home village, he found that 300 years had passed. So this could therefore be the earliest mention of relativity. Sam Glick in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He says, of course, I also look forward to Osiris-Rex, space rocks. Pun intended.

Yeah. And then finally from Adam Kajokar in Calgary, Canada. According to Planetary Resources, that company that would like to mine these objects, the value of said asteroid is over, get this, $95 billion, similar to the number of fans Bruce has in the local group. Aww. Unfortunately, most of them are in other galaxies. What a shame. They have to wait so long to hear the next episode. They do. Actually, to hear the first episode.

Okay, enough of that. What do you got for next time? What star has the largest proper motion? So proper motion is the observed changes in apparent positions of stars in the sky seen from the center of mass of the solar system compared to the imaginary fixed background of the more distant stars. Basically, it moves relative to more distant stars and what moves

the most when measured in that sense. What star has largest proper motion? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. So it's the perpendicular to the radial velocity. It's how much is it moving across the sky, so to speak. It's going to be dominated by stars that are relatively closer to Earth. You have until Wednesday, June 7 at 8 a.m. Pacific time to get us this answer and win yourself a Planetary Radio t-shirt, a 200-point itelescope.net account. And you know what? Let's throw in a Planetary Radio sticker because one of our colleagues found a little stash of them, and we can afford to throw one in the envelope with the shirt. You're getting crazy, man.

Just nuts. We're giving them away. All right. Everybody go out there, look up at the night sky, think about what Matt and I are thinking about. What's for lunch? Thank you and good night. I can't wait. I'm so hungry. He's Bruce Betts. He's the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society, but you knew that. And he joins us every week here on What's Up. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by its members and other Martians everywhere. Danielle Gunn is our associate producer. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which was arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser.

I'm Matt Kaplan. Clear skies.