Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Chris McKay, Larry Niven and Andy Weir at the Contact Conference

Episode Date: June 7, 2016

Space art and science fiction joined science fact at the 2016 Contact Conference in Sunnyvale, California. We talk with three well-known visionaries.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Chris McKay, Andy Weir, and Larry Ringworld-Niven, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome to the travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. Join me at the Contact Conference in Sunnyvale, California, for brief conversations with three visionaries. By surest coincidence, I'll also talk with Bill Nye about plans to get humans to Mars sooner than most of us had thought possible. And Bruce Betts will once again help us celebrate the night sky. We begin with a look forward from

senior editor Emily Lakdawalla. Start of a new month, Emily, and it's time, therefore, to review your What's Up Around the Solar System piece, which is at planetary.org. There's far too much here, as usual, for us to be able to cover, but there are certainly some highlights. One of them, for me, has to be this beautiful visualization based on what MAVEN is telling us about the Martian atmosphere. MAVEN is a mission that's a little bit difficult to write about because it doesn't instantly produce beautiful pictures. It takes a lot of work to present the science that it's doing based on the motions of the upper atmosphere, the magnetosphere, and how the solar wind is interacting with Mars.

And that's exactly what a group at the Goddard Space Flight Center did to produce these visualizations of how the solar wind is stripping Mars's atmosphere away. And they just won some prizes from the AAAS for their work. And you can see why. It's a gorgeous animation. And of course, you can see it in this blog entry. All right. How about to Rosetta? A bit of a scare. Yeah, it's the kind of scare that this mission has had before, but it doesn't make it any less scary. When it flies very close to the comet, as it was last weekend, it was about five kilometers away, its star trackers, which are necessary for Rosetta to understand its orientation in space, its star trackers confuse some moving dust with stars, and that makes the spacecraft unsure of where it is,

and it has to go into a safe mode and radio Earth for help. But when it did that, it actually got even more confused and was out of contact with Earth for about 24 hours before they regained control. It's going to keep trying, though. That mission only has until September to finish up its comet science, and I'll be there in Germany this September to watch the very last moments of that mission. Wow, that will be very, very exciting. New Horizons, still waiting for pictures, but we are getting stamps. Yeah, New Horizons is steadily trickling the data down slowly, slowly, but we did finally get a very important publication out of this

mission, which was a new set of United States postage stamps. They update a set that was issued quite some time ago that had pictures of each of the planets. And then it had Pluto, which was at the time still a planet. It said Pluto not yet explored. And the New Horizons mission actually stuck one of those stamps on the spacecraft and sent it out away from the solar system. And now we have these new stamps with a gorgeous New Horizons photo of Pluto, and Pluto is now explored. And as proof that the hits just keep on coming around the solar system, something that didn't make it into your June 1st blog, because it only just happened 24 hours ago as we speak, Curiosity. That's right. Curiosity's 12th drill site on Mars. This one

really snuck up on me. They're drilling fast now that they're at Mount Sharp and are doing great science. All right, doing what it's supposed to do. Thank you very much, Emily. We'll talk to you again next week. Thank you, Matt. She is the senior editor for the Planetary Society, our planetary evangelist, and a contributing editor to Sky and Telescope magazine, and just learned that she's going to be on a panel at Comic-Con in San Diego this summer.

How cool is that? Well, here's more cool for you. Bill Nye is the CEO of the Planetary Society. Bill, Mars seems to become more of a real destination as every day goes by. I know what you mean. It is a real destination. But I mean, it seems like we're going to get there,

that humankind will get there. Yeah, the big news, I guess, is SpaceX wants to put stuff on the Martian surface. First of all, in 2018, that's less than two years from now. As soon as. Yeah.

And then land the big stuff with humans in 2024. That is extraordinarily fast. They have yet to launch their Falcon heavy. And we are all fans of the Falcon 9, right on, go Falcon 9. The Falcon Heavy's three times that many engines. It has 27 engines. And so they've got to test. To me, it seems like they've got to test this thing.

And, you know, of course the Planetary Society is included, Matt, because we're going to launch our LightSail 2 on the second Falcon Heavy next spring, we believe. Of course, we're going to talk about planetary protection. And in the meantime, by that I mean keeping humans from contaminating this other world. And in the meantime, NASA is going to continue with its sample return scheme. It's really extraordinary. What an extraordinary time, Mars-wise.

And at the same time, at that meeting, that summit, Humans to Mars, that you and I were at recently, Lockheed Martin made its announcement. Yes. Their plot to their plan, not a plot, for what they call the Mars Base Camp, which sounds a lot like humans orbiting Mars to me. Yes. Once again, the Planetary Society, I really am proud of this, Matt. I'm glad you brought this up. I really am proud of this, Matt. I'm glad you brought this up.

We issued a report based on a meeting we had a year ago. We called Humans Orbiting Mars in 2033. And 2033 is chosen because you wouldn't have to increase the NASA budget. If you decided to do it, if you were in charge, you could arrange a series of missions, a mission architecture as it's called, to get humans in orbit around Mars in 2033. Well, Lockheed Martin presented a scheme. It's very, very similar. Just happened to use almost exclusively Lockheed hardware, which is fine,

and to go a couple orbits earlier in 2028. And that would just be fantastic. Put humans in orbit around Mars in 2028 and land two or four years later would just be fantastic. So I'm hoping that the aggressive plans of SpaceX will actually merge with the aggressive plans of Lockheed Martin and the plans which will come into being at NASA once all these people really get serious about it. Establishing a consensus on how to get to Mars, which is the dream of our board of directors, I'll tell you. It's a very exciting time. Very exciting times indeed. Thank you, Bill. Thank you, Matt. That's the CEO of the Planetary Society. He's Bill Nye the Science Guy. Now we go on to the CONTACT Conference, one that you probably have never heard of, but should have. And I was there a couple of months ago talking to some pretty interesting people,

including Andy Weir. Scientists, writers, and artists exploring the possibilities for human futures. That's the mission of a biannual conference in Sunnyvale, California, called CONTACT, Cultures of the Imagination. It was just about as fun and fascinating as that sounds. I have to thank author Kim Stanley Robinson for letting me know it exists. He has been participating for nearly all of its more than three decades. Anthropologist James Fennaro founded and still runs CONTACT. He agreed with me that it's sort of a poor man's TED conference, loosely focused on the exploration of space and the search for life in the universe.

I was proud to see that many of the guest speakers were past guests of this show, including Penny Boston, Seth Shostak, space artist Rick Sternbach, and two of the guests you're about to hear. We'll start with Andy Weir, the man who stranded the Martian on the Red Planet and kept us in fascinated suspense as he fought to stay alive. I sat down with Andy moments after he delivered a presentation with a very promising message. You're in your backyard, aren't you? How'd you find out? James Fennaro just emailed me and invited me to come.

And I'm like, well, this is like five miles from my house, so how can I say no? You get to talk about that presentation that you just made. And then we'll say why, you crazy man, you've been doing all of this research. But first, the conclusions that you reached in there, and they were, as you put it, assumptions. Assumptions. Yeah, explain that in a moment. But that's very encouraging. Well, yeah.

According to my calculations, based on wild assumptions that cannot be backed up, I think that the price to LEO for a passenger could get as low as $7,000, and the price to put freight into low-Earth orbit could be as low as $35 in 2015 dollars. I don't know when that'll happen, but... What were some of the assumptions you made to reach those pretty amazing numbers? Well, assumption number one was that the commercial space industry would have the same fuel cost overhead ratio as the modern commercial airline industry, which works out to be about 16.5%. In other words, in the real world, airlines spend about 16.5% of all the money they get on jet fuel. And I said, well, what if a commercial space industry had that exact same overhead? 16.5% goes to rocket fuel and the other 83, 83 point, whatever, percent goes to overhead, buying new

ships, maintenance, salary, taxes, et cetera. And then I just worked from there. I also assumed that a spacecraft that could carry X people would weigh the same as an aircraft that can carry X people. This is excluding fuel. And then the final assumption I made was that all engineering problems would be solved, boosters would be completely reusable with minimal maintenance between uses, and that they would use hydrogen and oxygen as the fuel. These are some big engineering challenges.

And you used as a baseline a Boeing 777, just packed with people, 550 people, but doable. Are you actually talking about a spacecraft possibly with that kind of capacity? Absolutely. I'm just talking about saying, like, you know, we can make a plane that carries that many people, so we can make a spaceship that carries that many people, so we can make a spaceship that carries that many people. You also talked about the technical evolution that got us from the Wright Brothers and Charles Lindbergh to that Boeing 777. Do you see that underway? I do. I don't see it underway as fast as I'd like. But basically, the reason we have a commercial air industry in the world, and especially in America, is because the government dumped huge amounts of money into helping the burgeoning air travel industry when it first started.

They had the U.S. Postal Service buy huge amounts of air freight for air mail. They set aside extremely valuable land in the middle of major metropolises to be airports. I mean, just the investment that the U.S. federal government made into building up the commercial airline industry was phenomenal. And it has since paid off many, many multiples more than we put into it, of course, because of taxes, revenues, jobs, everything that the commercial airline industry provided. And I think the same can be done for the commercial space industry. And we see a little of that starting to happen now with the commercial crew program. NASA is required to spend a certain percentage of its budget to outsource booster developments. That's why we have companies like SpaceX and Boeing working on cheaper and cheaper boosters.

And you're a big fan of that, aren't you? Commercial space development. Oh, absolutely. I think it's the only way forward. The only way to make a real space industry is for there to be a commercial and capitalist incentive. Some entity that has billions of dollars needs to decide if we spend a couple of billion dollars, we will get a bunch of billions of dollars in the end. And you talk about this as well. I've spent my seven grand for my economy seat up in orbit. I got my bag of peanuts. I have to keep them down too. What am I going to do while I'm up there? Well, I imagine that since the freight price to low Earth orbit would only be 35 bucks per kilogram, large wealthy entities could build space hotels, things like that,

things of that nature. When you consider the price that it costs to build a resort, like a resort in the Caribbean, they'll spend $200 million, $300 million building that. Well, if you wanted to put something the mass of the International Space Station in orbit, it would only cost $10 million by these prices I calculated. And of course, I mean, some assembly required, right? That's just the price of getting it up there, building it is a different matter.

But this is all in the same scale and order of magnitude of what modern companies pay right now for major resorts because they know they'll turn a profit. Now, we know you, and we know that you might have just done all this math just to do it, just as an exercise. But you actually are building towards something tell us what's coming yeah it's my uh my next book is about a city on the moon and it's predicated on

on this assumption that the price till leo gets driven down and down by by commercial entities it's always bothered me when i see a science fiction story about people living on the moon i'm like what is the economic incentive here and in my case, my moon city is like, if you do all the math and use these numbers, you end up with, it is, you can turn a profit just with a tourism industry. And so how much to get my kilogram up to the surface of the moon?

It ends up being $168 in 2015 dollars from the surface of earth to the surface of the moon. Not bad. Did you happen to take this out to uh what's that red planet i forget mars mars actually i didn't i didn't work that out because i was so focused on my on my moon story i haven't been thinking about mars that much believe it or not when might we see this new book probably uh early to mid 2017 i'm working on the first draft now so cool andy and I'm very much looking forward to your participation in a panel about that red planet tomorrow, led by Chris McKay, another guy who's been on this show a lot.

Yeah, along with Kim Stanley Robinson and Larry Niven. Really looking forward to that. And you just met one of your heroes. I did. I just met Larry Niven. I'm thrilled. It's awesome. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me. Andy Weir, author of The Martian, preparing to thrilled. It's awesome. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me. Andy Weir, author of The Martian, preparing to take us to the moon.

We'll return to the Contact Conference with Chris McKay and the great Larry Niven. This is Planetary Radio. This is Robert Picardo. I've been a member of the Planetary Society since my Star Trek Voyager days. You may have even heard me on several episodes of Planetary Radio. Now I'm proud to be the newest member of the board of directors. I'll be able to do even more to help the society achieve its goals for space exploration across our solar system and beyond. You can join me in this exciting quest.

The journey starts at planetary.org. I'll see you there. at planetary.org. I'll see you there. Do you know what your favorite presidential candidate thinks about space exploration? Hi, I'm Casey Dreyer, the Planetary Society's Director of Space Policy. You can learn that answer, and

what all the other candidates think, at planetary.org slash election2016. You know what? We could use your help. If you find anything we've missed, you can let us know. It's all at planetary.org slash election2016. You know what? We could use your help. If you find anything we've missed, you can let us know. It's all at planetary.org slash election2016. Thank you. Welcome back to Planetary Radio.

You heard Andy Weir mention the panel he would be part of at the CONTACT conference. Chris McKay moderated that wonderful discussion. Chris is a senior scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center and one of the founders of a field known as astrobiology. As you'll hear, Chris was also a founding member of the self-proclaimed Mars Underground, the small group of scientists and true believers who years ago fought to keep Mars missions and science alive. The group included the new director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, Penny Boston, and planetary scientist roboticist Carol Stoker.

I caught Chris in a hallway right after the session. You just led this fascinating panel. What a great group. Yeah, a bunch of scientists, science fiction writers together, talking about why we go to Mars, and it worked out really well. There's an interesting chemistry and feedback between science fiction and science, and we saw it on this panel. Yeah, and we heard from scientists like you how much of a role the science fiction played in what you do. That's right. Virtually all the scientists on the panel claimed they were inspired by one or the other science fiction work. And interesting to me was how some of the science fiction writers claim they were inspired by the science results.

So I think it's a wonderful example of how humans work. We are inspired by our imagination, and our imagination is inspired by what we do. At least one person mentioned the case for Mars. And I think of the Mars underground. That was you. That was Penny Boston, right? And Carol. Could you have had a discussion like this back in those days when you guys were kind of the voices in the darkness? Well, we could have had a discussion like that, but the context would have been different. It would have been a fringe discussion. Now the idea of going to Mars is mainstream. NASA's officially trying to do it. There's movies about it. It's no longer viewed as quite as edgy as it was back then, which is a good thing and a bad thing. It's fun to be on the

edge. It's fun to be pushing the envelope. But at some point, the notion that it becomes accepted and people foresee it is also good. So yeah, it's good to be at this point. I had just one more. Until I can get you back for an extended conversation on the show, which is long overdue, there was a question about the methane on Mars. You had a response which was a little depressing, but that's science, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have found methane on Mars. The SAM instrument on Curiosity has made a series of precision measurements that in my mind are the best measurements of methane on Mars and the only ones to be given any credence to. And those measurements indicate a constant, very low level of methane consistent with

just meteoritic infall of organic material. And I think that's the story of methane on Mars. All the other measurements, including the other measurements made by the SAM instrument and the low precision mode, should just be discarded. They're not really precise or useful. These high precision measurements are the only data, I think, that really addresses the question. So Penny Boston's interesting comment on that was, okay, now we have the reference point. Now we've established the baseline.

And then she went on to say, you know, anything that's up there making methane is going to want to hang on to it. But what if some leaks out? What if, could you still see a point source at some point telling us that things are more interesting? If there is methane being produced underground, Penny's point is exactly right. They're not, it's going to be disadvantageous to that system to be losing the methane. The counterpart to that is if there is such a source, the small leak that would be coming from it is going to be very hard to detect. I'm not very optimistic that searching for methane is a viable strategy for searching for life.

I've never embraced that idea. We will find out more about this when the European orbiter goes around Mars and starts doing very high-precision methane mapping. I predict what it's going to find is a very low-level constant methane all over the planet, and I'm going to be saying, I told you so. Unfortunately, I would love there to be exotic plumes of methane hither and yon flowing out in geysers, but the data just doesn't indicate that, and neither does the theory. When you come back, I'll have to have you tell us about this mission that apparently has been proposed that you are the PI for called Icebreaker, which I hadn't heard of. But you

want to give us a two-sentence preview? Well, maybe sometime, Matt, I should sit down with you and talk about searching for life on Mars. I think that NASA is going to get serious about it now. NASA has been directed by Congress to search for life in the outer solar system. The Mars program is going to say, hey, what about life on Mars? And suddenly, searching for life on Mars will become fashionable. And we, Carol and I, are working on a mission concept to address that need. And I think it's coming in gangbusters. So in a few months, maybe a little longer, we should have a really good story on how will we be ready to search for life when the Mars program decides it's time to catch up with what's now going on in the outer solar system. Let's do it. That was a good tease, though. Thanks, Chris.

You bet. Good talking to you. Chris McKay at the 2016 Contact Conference in Sunnyvale, California. Now a special treat for you online listeners to the show, and especially for those of you who love the classics of hard science fiction. You know who Larry Niven is, and you know what he has created. Yeah, there's the Kazinti, a terrifying alien race that makes Klingons look like pacifists. There's Lucifer's Hammer, his and Jerry Pornel's terrific novel about how humanity barely survives a massive meteor strike. So much more, but I bet you've been waiting for me to mention Ringworld, the fictional location Niven created for a series of brilliant novels.

Never heard of it? Well, it's only one of the grandest concepts ever put forward in science fiction. I just want to start by telling you I'm a huge fan, which you hear all the time, don't you? I do if I come here. And you've been coming here for a long time. Are you one of the originals here at the CONTACT conference? I was one of the originals. I've skipped many years since

because building worlds is kind of what I do for a living. So it's a busman's holiday. But all sorts of worlds. The discussions here, the presentations. I told Jim, the founder, that some of these are TED quality, if not more interesting. Do you find stimulation, inspiration here for that other stuff you do with your life? Yes, I do. I come here mostly to listen. But there are a lot of people here who only want to, not only, but they're here in part to hear people like you speak.

One of your biggest fans, Andy Weir, the author of The Martian, was so honored to meet you yesterday. It's an interesting position to be in. I liked The Martian enough to give it a cover puff. So we're a mutual admiration society. You know, Andy talked about reading Ringworld many years ago. I think I still have my paperback copy. It's pretty dog-eared now. I still have my paperback copy. It's pretty dog-eared now. As a professional speculator, are we progressing, do you think,

at the rate that you wish humanity was progressing toward, at least across the solar system, if not the stars? Oh, yes. I've watched a lot of the future happen. There were some mistakes in my picture of the future. I thought human beings would be more involved in exploration, but I didn't see the possibilities of the machines. Well, let me ask you about a presentation we just heard from Kim Stanley Robinson, who was on the show not long ago with his premise that a lot of people have given him heat about,

that humans may never themselves go to the stars. What do you think? I think his premises are defensible. I've seen, oh, what am I thinking? The 1,000-year plan that involves linear accelerators stretching through the solar system to get ships to the other stars? I don't, Kim's taken the pessimistic view. That's okay. I took the optimistic view

mostly. Yes, I'd say the guy who invented the ring world is probably not too surprised to hear talking about solar system-sized linear accelerators to get us out there. Do you think that we need to go? I think for the safety of the species, we do.

But I also think species don't stay the same anyway. Species mutate and evolve. So what reaches the stars may not be human anymore. This is possibly that human 2.0 that we've heard about quite a bit today into the machines. I'm with Kim in one respect. We should take over the solar system in order to protect our species. We should at least be able to stop the next dinosaur killer asteroid. Which we may not be too far from the capability to do that right now, at least let's hope. We're much closer than we were when I wrote Lucifer's Hammer.

Yes, another terrific book from the past. What are you up to now? What should we be looking forward to? I don't know. I'm getting old, man. If I can help stop the next dinosaur killer, I'll have justified my existence on Earth. I'm thankful for many things that I think have justified your existence on Earth. If it was only for Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex, I'd be thankful to you.

Okay, I've amused some people. It's true. And far more. Thank you very much, Mr. Niven. Pleasure. Author Larry Niven at the 2016 Contact Conference in Sunnyvale, California. I'm grateful to conference founder Jim Funaro, and I hope to be back for the that we can talk about what's up in the night. Sky, welcome back. Hi, Matt. How are you feeling? I'm feeling much better, thank you.

Still a little residual coldness, but basically good. Yeah, you sound great. You sound great. I got you a mask. I was at JPL a couple of days ago in a clean room, so they let me take an extra mask for you. I'll drop it off at the office. Thank you. What's up? Well, I'm going to be redundant and say Mars, Mars, but also in the evening sky, we've got Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn. So if you look to the south in the early evening, you'll see a really bright whitish object,

brighter than any star in the sky, that's Jupiter. Then work your way over towards the east and you'll see a really bright reddish-orangeish object, that's Mars. And then near it, not too far away, is yellowish Saturn. And I remind you, you can draw a line between those three and it will basically be a line or very close to it since all the planets orbit in roughly the same plane. You can check out Mars near the moon on the 17th. So that'll be a pretty, pretty sight. That's the party in the sky. We move on to this week in space history. It was 2003 that the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit was launched. We move on to Random Space Fact. There are 10 NASA field centers.

They are Ames, Armstrong, Glenn, Goddard, JPL, Johnson, Kennedy, Langley, Marshall, Stennis. And Dopey, right? They are considering renaming one of them. considering renaming one of them. All other facilities in the NASA bureaucratic hierarchy fall under the leadership of at least one of these field centers. Wow, that's very cool. And I love how you just reeled those off there. Well, yeah, trying to burn out the brain of my fish.

Well, maybe I'm not totally healthy. I'm not sure. Yeah, I'd say that's in question now. You can go on. We move on to the trivia contest, and I asked you, which direction does Jupiter's great red spot rotate, as seen from Earth or from above the planet? How did we do?

Well, most people got this one right, and we did get a lot of entries for this. Well, most people got this one right, and we did get a lot of entries for this. People who, I guess, are very interested in getting that copy of Offworld Trading Company, that game that you tried out, the economic strategy game set on a future colonized Mars. Our winner, at least as chosen by Random.org, he won just maybe six months ago. It's Andrew Jones up in Kaurava, Finland, one of our listeners across the pond. He said the answer is anti-clockwise because I'm British. But as it's south of the equator, you might not see it. But anyway, you deduce as much.

But then if you mean rotation of the great right spot itself, still anti-clockwise as I'm still British and going to bed now. How do you do? Fine. We would call it counterclockwise typically over in the colonies. Yeah. What is that George Bernard Shaw quote? Two civilizations separated by a common language. two civilizations separated by a common language.

Now, Andrew picked up the 200-point itelescope.net astronomy account as well. But we had two other winners of Offworld Trading Company, Patrick McCabe of Palm Harbor, Florida, who said counterclockwise, and Eric Jaffe of Corte Madera, California. He said it's clockwise as seen from within the storm, though that's not recommended. No, no, I think that would be unpleasant. Just a couple of others to mention.

Kevin Hecht, a regular entrant, he got a little cranky. He added to his correct answer, all these modern kids with their digital clocks don't know their CW from their CCW. Finally, this from Dave Fairchild. I think you will enjoy his little poem, his little ditty this week. The Great Red Spot is shrinking in its counterclockwise spin while rafting around the planet like a huckleberry fin. Cassini probably noticed it in 1665 considerably longer than Bruce Betts has been alive. Oh, thank you.

I don't like a day over 1670. No, not at all. Looking really good, actually. We're ready to move on. Back to NASA field centers. How many NASA field centers are currently named after former astronauts? Because they're named after all sorts of things. Politicians, presidents, who are also politicians, generals, aviation pioneers, scientists.

How many are currently named after former astronauts? Go to planetary.org slash radiocontest. I love it. This one you've got until the 14th of June, June 14 at 8 a.m. Pacific time. And we'll backtrack a little bit here. We haven't given away a shirt in a while. Planetary Radio shirt will be yours along with a rubber asteroid from the Planetary Society

and a 200-point account on that itelescope.net International Astronomy Service. And that's it. We're done. All right, everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky, and think about the happiest thing in the universe. Thank you, and good night. Oh, man, while I try to think of that, I'm going to Disneyland. Can we say that? He's Bruce Betts, the Director of Science and Technology

for the Planetary Society, who joins us every week here for What's Up. No commercial compensation was provided for that mention of the happiest place on Earth. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by its High Concept members. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which was arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser.

I'm Matt Kaplan. Clear skies. Thank you.