Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Living in Space!

Episode Date: January 24, 2018

Mat Kaplan talks with participants in the National Space Society’s recent Space Settlement Summit about human destiny in space.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Living in space. It's getting closer, this week on Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. And I've got a special episode for you. Your friendly PlanRad host was a guest of the National Space Society at its Space Settlement Summit last October. We'll devote today's show to conversations I had at that two-day event in Southern California. Never fear, Bruce Betts will still drop by for this week's What's Up, including his guide to seeing the January 31st total lunar eclipse. The National Space Society has quite a vision. eclipse. The National Space Society has quite a vision. People living and working in thriving communities beyond the Earth and the use of the vast resources of space for the dramatic

betterment of humanity. Its mission is to promote progress toward that lofty goal. Never before has it seemed so achievable. It's why the Society invited a select group of space leaders to the second Space Settlement Summit. Mark Hopkins helped create the organization more than 30 years ago. He had been a leader of the L5 Society that preceded the NSS and has occupied other leadership positions ever since, serving now as chair of the Society's Executive Committee. This meeting, now as chair of the society's executive committee. This meeting, the Space Settlement Summit, seems to be right at the core of that mission. That's exactly right.

The fundamental goal of the National Space Society and our precursor organization, the L5 Society, before it, is space settlement and the use of the vast resources of space for the dramatic betterment of humanity. We started this all in 1975 when things like space settlement were considered to be pretty crazy ideas. But what has happened in the last few years is that many of these ideas are becoming mainstream due to people like Elon Musk, SpaceX, talking about colonizing Mars, and Jeff Bezos, the second richest man in the world, talking about millions of people living in space, which are basically our core ideas. So we decided that if we're going to continue to be the leader in this area, we need to double down and have a conference which is very specifically aimed at our core idea, space settlement.

which is very specifically aimed at our core idea of space settlement. And then in a more general and perhaps important sense, the reason space settlement is so important is because the vast majority, by orders of magnitude, factors of 100,000 million of the resources of the solar system lie in space rather than on the Earth. The sun, for example, puts out 10 trillion, that's a trillion with a T, times the amount of energy currently used by the human race. And by tapping into those resources,

we can improve the standard of living of all humans by a very large factor. You used a phrase when you opened this conference this morning and talked about human destiny or manifest destiny. Yes, various reasons I'm arguing that the manifest destiny of the human race as a whole is space settlement because if that's where the wealth is, that's where the resources are. Look, the United States has a standard of living which is about a factor of six above the average of the world, but the median standard of living is much lower than that. The majority of people in the world live at a standard of living which is a factor of 25 below what it is in the United States, and poor people in the world, bottom fourth, live at a standard of living which is one

fourth of what it is in the United States. In order to raise everybody up to what the standard of living is in the United States, not to mention improve the standard of living of people in advanced countries like the United States as well, we've got to really increase the size of the human economy by a factor of, in order of magnitude at least. And where are we going to get the resources to do that and do that in a way which is environmentally benign? It's increasingly difficult to see how you're going to do that using only the finite resources of Earth. But if we can tap into the near-infinite resources of space, then these problems go away. If we can just smash the so-called limits to growth.

Are you excited to see this? I mean, do you see, even though it may still only be scratching the surface, do you see things moving the way the NSS has for so many years, how you personally have felt we need to go? Just a couple weeks ago, the Vice President of the United States announced that a major goal of the U.S. Human Space Program would be a return to the moon. This time, it looks like the idea is to stay there permanently. And you do that, and you're setting yourselves up to evolve into a lunar settlement, one of the things we'll be talking about at this conference. And, you know, statements by Elon Musk,

putting a million people on Mars in 40 to 100 years, all this is very much in line with National Space Society, which we've been saying for years. So basically we're winning, which is really cool. I've been doing this over 40 years. To see what I've been pushing for so long. Makes me feel very good. Mark Hopkins of the National Space Society at that group's Space Settlement Summit last October. Many of you will remember author, speaker, and journalist Rod Pyle.

He was my guest last February when we talked about his great book, Amazing Stories of the Space Age. when we talked about his great book, Amazing Stories of the Space Age. Like me, Rod is a longtime NSS member and has worked with that society on several projects, including a new one he told me about when we sat down during a lunch break at the summit. Amazing Stories of the Space Age. Did I get it right? You did. Great, fun, fun book. But you've got another one coming out, and it's part of why you're here today.

But you've been involved with NSS for years, right? Yeah, I got involved when it was still National Space Institute back in the mid-80s, and then they merged with the L5 Society, and I stayed active for a while, and then I got pulled off into evil television land and so forth, and came back in the mid-early 2000s. And it's been nice to come back because, as you know, during that period of time, we had that kind of false dawn of new space where there are people gathering money and they had different ideas and projects. Not much of it really happened. Then here came SpaceX and suddenly it became real. And I thought, okay, I got to get back in the fold. So I think things are really taking off, which is one of the reasons why this is only the second year of this conference. So it's one of the reasons this is happening, I think. This is your next book, right, is about what's being talked about here and new space.

Well, I have four books slated for 2018. The one I'm working on right now with the National Space Society is called Space 2.0, and it is all about the new space age. So yes, this conference is really relevant to that. And in fact, I'm delaying delivery of the manuscript by a few weeks to make sure I incorporate the latest stuff. So it's been exciting to come hear what is planned and what's going on and what some of the new ideas are. And really talking about the NSS at its core has been about space settlement for decades. But part of the discussion that was difficult was to really build a good business case for it.

Now a lot of what we're hearing, including from the National Space Council and a few other places and bits and pieces, is we need a business case, we need infrastructure, we need logistical support, we need a price set for fuels and commodities and water and orbit. We need all this stuff so that we can build this in a sustainable way so it's not just snap our fingers and magically we have a big tin can out at L5 now. There's a real solid incremental business case being built. The aerospace giants are buying into it.

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin are buying into it. So I think that's what we're really seeing that's so exciting here. Do you think that now this vaporware is becoming the real thing? It sounds like it. I do. And I think, I mean, they're not bending metal on much of this yet. Elon says he's going to start building the BFR rocket in six months, but that he's already got the tooling done and so forth. Blue Origin, hard to say. It's hard to get news out of that organization. The traditional aerospace contractors are paying for studies and then going to NASA, you know, saying we'd like some money to pursue the Deep Space Gateway or Mars Base Camp or what have you.

But there is a lot of talk, I know, especially at places like ULA, where they've got the ACES reusable upper stage. So you've got a space tug that you can park in orbit and refuel and leave it there for, I think, up to six months. Now you're looking at something where you really are putting together this infrastructure that can support a continual operation. Now you've got a reason to go to the surface of the moon, get water, process it, make fuel, park it in orbit, and so forth. So yeah, I think it's becoming real. Maybe five years. And you bring up ULA, United Launch Alliance, and it was only hours before this summit that they announced this new partnership with Bigelow, Robert Bigelow, who wants to build inflatable space structures. They want to put one in low orbit around the moon.

Well, that's news to me. I had a little too much shore leave last night, so I woke up sort of late this morning. But that makes sense. And I know Bigelow's really been looking into this for a long time. And then we've got NASA with this kind of, I haven't read the whole thing, but the agreement with the Russians about we'll agree to agree to study the idea of working together on the Deep Space Gateway. But it makes sense because they've got hardware that can actually, I think, be repurposed for parts of this. They've got a lot of experience in Earth Orbital. We have a lot of experience in Earth Orbital.

So as we move off to this new cislunar adventure, it would make a certain amount of sense to do it together as long as we can both benefit. So you think lunar is it? I mean, that's certainly what Vice President Pence is telling us. Yeah. Yeah, I can get in trouble for saying this because there's a big Mars First crowd. And I understand their concerns. If we go to the moon,

we'll be there for probably 10 or 15 years unless some private entity pushes onto Mars. And I get that. But I think at this point, from everything I see, I'd be interested to hear your opinion. I think Mars is just a bridge too far. It's expensive. It's far. It's dangerous. We still don't really have the human factors worked out. Radiation abatement is a big problem. All these things that we're going to have to do on the moon and even at the deep space gateway to in cislunar space, that's a radiation exposure experiment, right? You're outside of the Earth's magnetosphere, but you're three days from home.

So if something goes wrong, you can hop on the shuttle and come back. I say shuttle in quotes. So I think it's a good idea, and I think it's what we can afford to do, and I think it's what we can get our government to commit to. If you run out of Band-Aids on the moon, they're only three days away. Exactly. And if you run out of Band-Aids on Mars, you have to make them out of potato skins or whatever it is Watney did.

And plus, you know, we're going to find a lot with the Mars 2020 rover. It's got an even more sophisticated laboratory, more detailed analysis of the soil conditions, I think. And my understanding is, from talking to some of the JPL folks, that there's still concern about exactly what we do face with abating the effects of Martian soil. So if you're in orbit, that's fine. Go to Phobos, no big deal.

But when you land on a planet that has highly reactive soil that's full of perchlorate and it hasn't rained for millions of years, so you breathe that incredibly fine talc-like dust, and they're talking about very high risks of cancer and so forth, the first number of years on that planet is going to be like living in a nuclear submarine under the ice cap. So are we ready for that? I don't think we are. But the moon is, to coin a phrase, a pretty harsh mistress as well. Well played, sir. I got to talk with Andy Weir recently and read his new book, Artemis, about a little town on the moon.

They are very, very strict about when you come in the airlock, you have air that blows all that nasty moon dust off of you because if you breathe any of it, you might just die eventually. It just seems like these places, they're going to be mean to us. They don't want us to live there. Yeah, I start a chapter in the New Space 2.0 book with the line that the editor loved, space hates people. And then move on to say, but here's all the things we could do to mediate that. But you're right. I mean, the moon is a harsh place. I don't think in many ways it's as harsh as Mars. I mean, gravity is a little less demanding, although Mars ain't much. It's what, 38% of Earth's. The nice thing with the moon is we've got rock and soil samples, so at least we know what

we're dealing with. We don't have that from Mars yet, except in meteorites, which have been banged around and fused and left in space for a long time. So it's good to at least know we're stepping into there. And Andy Weir is probably right. I mean, you're going to have to do all kinds of abatement techniques to make sure that you can have as little interaction with that dust as possible. But there's risks. And I was interviewing a flight surgeon for one of the book chapters at JSC. And I said, you know, we were talking about radiation, we were talking about bone density loss and all this stuff over the long term. I said, okay, it's dangerous out there. It's really dangerous to go to Mars because it's so long and there's so much stuff you're still working on.

How many of the people that you see on a regular basis, your astronauts, because you're a flight surgeon, how many of them would go anyway? And he said, virtually all. Of course. You know, they just, they said that, yeah, we get the radiation thing. That's fine. Can we please get on with it? It's dangerous.

We knew that when we took the job. And if I die six months earlier because of cancer, because I went to Mars, I'm cool with that. So would you be surprised if we have this conversation 10 years from today and there are people living up there on Luna, at least the way they live on the ISS now? Well, I'm glad you added that because I think there's a lot of talk by commercial space about long-term settlement, large-scale settlement. Elon Musk wants cities on Mars. We would like to have large bases on the moon.

But I do feel like if we want to get this done quickly, quickly in quotes, on more or less an Apollo timescale and really get things moving, it's an expeditionary project to start and then infrastructure follows. So, no, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw that within 10 years. There's a bigger city on the moon, like the European Lunar Village, maybe right at the 10-year mark, Mars. Shrugs. Not sure.

Don't know what to say about that. Fun times, though. When does the next one of those four books come out? Space 2.0 comes out mid-2018, and then I have two sequels to Amazing Stories of the Space Age. One is Amazing Stories of the Planets, which should appeal to your crowd, and the other one is Heroes of the Space Age, and those are going to be later in 2018. All right, then we'll have lots of reason to talk again in the coming year.

You bet, and I can't wait. Thanks, Rod. Thank you. Author and space activist Rod Pyle. I've got more for you from the recent Space Settlement Summit after the break. This is Planetary Radio. Hi, this is Casey Dreyer, the Director of Space Policy here at the Planetary Society. And I wanted to let you know that right now Congress is debating the future of NASA's budget.

The House has proposed to increase NASA's budget and also increase planetary science in 2018. The Senate, however, has proposed to cut both. You can make your voice heard right now. We've made it easy to learn more if you go to planetary.org slash petition 2017. Thank you. You can share your passion for space exploration by giving someone a gift membership to the Planetary Society this holiday season or any time of year. Your friend or loved one would join us as we nurture new and exciting science, advocate for space, and educate the world.

The gift of space starts at planetary.org forward slash give space. That's planetary.org forward slash give space. Because, come on, it's space. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. The National Space Society's second Space Settlement Summit came to Santa Monica, California last October. Among the leaders it attracted was Daniel Raske. Dan is chief of NASA's Space Portal Office at the Ames Research Center. Tell us what the Space Portal Office does.

You folks are very well represented here at this meeting about space settlements. Well, we came together in 2005. We were a grassroots organization that we came together to really promote commercial space development for both NASA and national benefit. Our tagline when we first formed was the friendly front door to space because we figured NASA needed at least one. A friendly face charged with what? I mean, what have you been able to accomplish?

Well, again, we formed together on our own volition. We were four civil servants who were quite interested in commercial space back in mid-2000s. We saw a lot of opportunity for NASA to partner with the budding commercial space industry to advance capabilities that were important to both NASA and the country. And we thought it was being underserved at the time relative to standard NASA programs. And we thought it was being underserved at the time relative to standard NASA programs. And so we came together and said, okay, what can we do to kind of help promote new programmatic structures that would be more receptive and supportive of commercial space? And our big win out of that time was the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services Program, or COTS.

It came out of our office, this whole idea of a metrics-based approach for space development. In contrast to the standard approach was something called COTS Plus contracting, which is what NASA does on most of its very large programs. COTS was, is it fair to say, revolutionary? Oh, absolutely. I am convinced that in part we were able to go forward with it because so many people thought it would fail and thought it would become the poster child for don't try this. But it actually succeeded famously and was instrumental to the success of SpaceX.

Without the COTS program, I don't think Elon would be in the space business right now. What a different world it would be. Return on investment. There was a really impressive figure given by one of your people this morning. Yeah, actually, one of our former colleagues, Dr. Rebecca Spike-Kaiser, who ran the Office of Strategic Formulation at NASA headquarters, when COTS was moving along nicely and when SpaceX had successfully launched, I think, their second Falcon 9 at that time, she became interested in documenting what kind of cost impact is this having relative to government contracting.

And so she actually commissioned a study to look at the projected costs for doing a rocket development program to get to a Falcon 9 capability versus the amount of money that we know that Elon and SpaceX invested to get to that level. And NASA actually has a costing tool, which is called NAFCOM, which stands for NASA Air Force Costing Methodology. So it's a costing tool that you put in. You want to do a piece of space hardware, you know its size, you know some of its other attributes, it'll come back with, here's the expected cost to develop that piece of hardware.

And so when they ran the NAFCOM model on the Falcon 9 capability, they came up with a cost just under $4 billion with a B. And we know at that time from several sources that Elon had just under $4 billion with a B. And we know at that time from several sources that Elon had spent under $400 million. We were all very surprised. We knew we had lower costs, but I think the conventional wisdom, okay, maybe a factor of two, maybe a factor of three. But when the study was done and showed a factor of 10, it caught a lot of people by surprise. Subsequently, we actually looked at another program called Spacehab. This is a private activity that actually Bruce Pittman was instrumental in to develop a logistics model that flew in the payload bay of the shuttle.

In the same way it was done privately, you know, with working with NASA. Privately and very successfully. Very successfully at the time. And we documented a factor of eight cost savings for Spacehab. So, yeah, so significant cost savings when you use these more effective contracting methods when there is sufficient commercial interest. And that commercial interest is really key. You have a very nice additional benefit, which is private sector jobs, which in a lot of ways are more attractive than government jobs, and that's something that we're seeing now coming out of the COTS program, including places like Alabama, where Jeff Bezos, who runs Blue Origin,

has just opened a big rocket engine factory in Alabama. So suddenly they're seeing the other side of the coin that promoting commercial space interests and economic development can lead to jobs. Okay, it's not just a threat to government jobs. It can actually generate private sector jobs as well. You are talking about adding an L to the beginning of that, LCOTS. Yeah, Lunar COTS. The idea is to take the best practices from the original COTS program, which was put in place to establish commercial transportation services

to the International Space Station, both for cargo and then now for crew, but use some of the best practices from COTS to help engage development of lunar capabilities, lunar surface capabilities. And that's why we call that Lun from COTS to help engage development of lunar capabilities, lunar surface capabilities, and that's why we call that Lunar COTS. Similarly, the government putting out contracts to industry to demonstrate certain capabilities for lunar surface access and other lunar surface infrastructure that we believe would be very important for lunar development and also address a number of NASA needs relative to exploration and development. So we're calling that Lunar COTS. As you think back

12 years to 2005 when the four of you said, hey, why don't we do this new approach? You're feeling pretty good not only about where we are but where we're going? At this point, yes. I have to say looking back, if you had told me it was going to take 12 years to really get this model to be adopted and expanded, I would have been a little disheartened. But things take time. And the development of the emerging or the commercial space industry since 2005 with SpaceX, with companies like Blue Origin from Jeff Bezos,

smaller organizations such as Astrobotic, ULA. It's been quite, I think, rewarding to see how we are expanding the commercial space industry and generating jobs and capability for the U.S., and so that side of it is quite pleasing to see. So how do you think you and your colleagues are going to feel next year, if all goes well, and we see Boeing and SpaceX put the first commercial crews up in low Earth orbit? Oh, we'll be very pleased about that. And actually we've been staying reasonably close with the NASA headquarters manager,

Phil McAllister, who runs that program, and things are going quite well with the commercial crew. And again, Dragon's flying my heat shield, so I'm always pleased to see whenever SpaceX is doing things with Dragon. And the public attention to what is going on, the excitement and the bright eyes of students and other younger individuals when you tell them about some of the opportunities that we see coming in for space, that's quite rewarding as well. Thank you, Daniel, both for this conversation

but also for forging that new path into space. You're very welcome, and the best is yet to come. Dan Raske, chief of NASA's Space Portal Office. I'll close my coverage of the NSS Space Settlement Summit with something that caught me by surprise. There are about 90 undergraduates at the University of California, Berkeley, who have largely given up the usual extracurricular pastimes of college students. There's little time for keg parties, football games, and road trips

when you're building a rocket. They call that rocket Eureka, which is not by coincidence also California's state motto. It's all part of Project Carmen, and that name will become clear as we meet two leaders of the effort. My name is Dorothea McCree. I'm a freshman at UC Berkeley. And you're the propulsion engineer for this project? I am the manager of the propulsion team, yes, at Space Enterprise at Berkeley. And you are? My name is Paul Shin. I'm a second year at UC Berkeley, and I was actually the co-founder and now the chief business development officer for Space Enterprise at Berkeley.

And has this all been generated from the bottom up by students, by undergraduates at UC Berkeley? Yes, this is completely student-developed. That is something that I absolutely love to tell everybody in regards to organization. There has been no faculty sponsor in the beginning, no professional that came in to help us set this entire organization up. It was completely student-led, student-motivated, and student-driven up till this point. You are the first freshman propulsion systems manager I've ever met. That's quite an opportunity. Yeah, I became really interested in space propulsion sometime last year, actually, when I was working on a capstone project for my high school.

Met Paul and Eric while they were recruiting, interviewed, and did well in the interview, and was asked to be propulsion manager, and took the job. And it was a very good decision. It's a lot of time and a lot of commitment. But I taught myself a lot of rocket science in about two weeks. And now I know how rockets work. Well, it is rocket science, as you said. It is rocket science. This is a rather ambitious project for, I mean, even if you were grad students, but for undergrads. The success of this project and the success of successfully launching this rocket into space,

passing the 100-kilometer Karman line, which is something that nobody, no college team has ever done before. Being able to do that is like an indication that there has been a new awakening, a new capability of what college students can really do. And in that sense, we find that using the word Eureka, I have found it

to be a fitting motto and a name for something as grandiose as this. There are business students, there are marketing students, there are humanities students, but specifically within design, most of us are, in fact, STEM majors. What is the current status? Where do you stand, and how far off is going to be at least a static test or launch? Definitely.

So the work plan for our organization right now that we're following to make sure that we're able to meet the July 2018 launch, that's what makes our organization truly different because it's not a vision for us. It is not a strategic goal that we set that we're going to be able to meet within the next five, ten years. It is literally the goal we have set for this year. It actually lasts nine months. And because of that short timeline that we have, the motivation and the drive and just stress and urgency within our organization is just always apparent. And I like to say it's almost like the engineers that were working on the Apollo 11 program that were making sure that absolutely no matter what,

they can make that launch before any other competing nation. This is really something that I love doing, that we all love doing, and it's something that I look forward to staying up really late two nights a week and then using up my Saturday to work on. What are you getting out of the experience? Seeing this grow from a passion that I had to now a passion that 90 other students share constantly to get something done,

it's more than just a leadership opportunity or a leadership experience for me at this moment. This organization has no longer just became an experience to hone my business skills and do something pretty insane with other people. It's teaching me what needs to be done to do something great just in life. If all goes well, where is that launch going to take place? The launch will be taking place at Spaceport America in White Sands, New Mexico. I wish you and the entire team of 90 undergrads, all undergrads? All undergrads. All undergrads.

All of you the greatest of success. Eureka, and get some sleep between now and July 18th. I'll try. Two of the UC Berkeley undergrads who are part of Project Carmen with the goal of becoming the first college team to boost a rocket past the threshold of space. I want to thank the National Space Society for inviting me to cover its Space Settlement Summit. At Astra, folks. Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio.

Bruce Betts is at Planetary Society headquarters. He's the director of science and technology for the society. Does so much more that we don't need to go into it. It'd take too long because you do so much. But I'm really glad that What's Up is on that list. It is indeed, and I enjoy this part. So let's get right into it, shall we? So we've got Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn in the predawn east, but I want to focus again on the total lunar eclipse visible from Asia, Australia, the Pacific Ocean, Western North America, and Eastern Europe. Here are some times for you. In UT, the partial umbral eclipse, so when you first really start seeing the shadow,

is 1148 UT on the 31st. Greatest eclipse is 1330, and the umbral eclipse ends at 1511. In Pacific time, that's 348 AM form. for the beginning of the umbral eclipse, 530 a.m. for greatest eclipse. And the umbral eclipse would end at 711 a.m. So indeed, for even Western America, but certainly middle Americas, the sun rises before the eclipse ends. Very much something to look forward to. I'm going to try and get up at that hour and check it out. Good job. Me too, I think. On to this week in space history.

We've entered the dark week of planetary exploration, at least NASA's human program. In 1967, three astronauts perished in the Apollo 1 fire. And in 1986, seven perished in the Challenger accident. And then just coming up a few days later is the anniversary of the Columbia accident in 2003. Always very sad and so eerie that all three of these happen in the same week. It is indeed. Sad, but a good thing to remember the astronauts. Here's some straight happy news. 2004, 14 years ago, Opportunity landed on Mars and it's still going.

Still roving. Absolutely amazing. It really is. I have very few electronic devices that have lasted anywhere near that long. I don't think I have any. electronic devices that have lasted anywhere near that long. I don't think I have any. I think my body barely runs. No, never mind. All right. We move on to Random Space Fact.

A lovely rendition. Thank you. You're welcome. So Neptune, Neptune's Adam's ring, has brighter portions called ring arcs. They were the first elements of Neptune's ring system to be discovered. It wasn't initially clear that there was even a complete ring, which there is. But the arcs are regions within the ring where there's a higher density of material causing a higher brightness. material causing a higher brightness. The five short arcs are named Fraternité, Égalité, One and Deux, and Liberté and Courage. So let me guess, these were discovered by someone who speaks French. Indeed it was. It was discovered by French observers.

Has anybody figured out why this material has not, why it's kind of clumped on one arc of these rings, why it hasn't spread out more? Is it just gravity? It's clumpy. People are still arguing about it. So there are several different theories, some of them tied to a small moon called Galatea, which orbits just inside that ring. There are a bunch of different ideas, and to my knowledge, no one's fully satisfied with any of them, but maybe some of the people proposing the theories are. All right. Very interesting. We move on to the trivia contest. As measured by surface area, what is the largest known body of liquid, so in this case, methane and ethane, on Saturn's moon Titan?

How do we do? Bigger response than average. And all I can think is that people love Titan. I do. Valerie Wood in Charleston, West Virginia, she said, love the show. A rare entry from me. Maybe I'll be lucky this time. Well, Valerie, maybe.

She says Kraken or Kraken Mare is the largest body of liquid on Titan's surface. Correct? That is indeed correct. Then, Valerie, you've hit the jackpot. Congratulations. We're going to be sending you a Planetary Society t-shirt. It's really cool. And a 200-point itelescope.net astronomy account.

I've got more, of course. Garrett Kingman in Stanford, California. If you think of it proportionately, because Crecganmarie is apparently about 154,000 square miles, and I may have that someplace here, about 400,000 square kilometers. That's about half a percent of Titan's total surface area, or about the same proportion of Titan as Argentina occupies on Earth. That's big. That is indeed. Here's Craig Balog in Woodbridge, New Jersey, who knows how to get himself mentioned by us on the show. He says that's the equivalent, if his math is correct, of about 12.5 billion light sail to solar sails.

That's actually how I think of it. We, of course, are petitioning to make the area of the solar sail the standard measure of area. And we heard from a whole bunch of people, including Christopher Beck in Williamsburg, Virginia, that it's bigger than the Caspian Sea. That's the biggest sea on Earth or about the size of five lake superiors. Of course, it ain't water. Marcel John Kregsman in the Netherlands, a regular listener. He says, I hear it's lovely this time of year with a balmy 99 degrees Kelvin. Yum.

No, it is. It's nice. You can do some sailing and swimming. And actually, none of those things are good ideas. Just bring the dry suit, the really thick dry suit. Finally, this from Mark Wilson in my own town of San Diego. He says, once the sun sets on Titan,

this lake, Kraken Mare, becomes a real night mare. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Okay, there we go. I just don't know how I feel about the fact that you have that now. Well, I'll try and use restraint.

Tell us, what do you got for next time? Back to Neptune's rings. What are the names of Neptune's five principal rings? The names of Neptune's five principal rings go to planetary.org slash radio contest. You have until the 31st, the last day of January. That's Wednesday at 8 a.m. Pacific time to get us the answer to this one. And once again, you might win yourself a lovely Planetary Society T-shirt with Mars and Earth intersecting in an interplanetary Venn diagram. Ven diagram and a 200-point itelescope.net astronomy account, that worldwide network of telescopes operated on a non-profit basis on behalf of lots and lots and lots of people.

You can donate this to a school, an astronomy club, or keep it for yourself and do some serious sky watching. All right, everybody, go out there, look up the night sky, and think about your favorite ring and your least favorite ring. Thank you, and good night. My favorite ring, it's on my finger. Oh. It really is.

I like it. He's Bruce Betts. He's the director of science and technology for the Planetary Society. He runs rings around the rest of us and joins us every week here for What's Up. Have you seen Paul Hildebrandt's great documentary, Fighting for Space? Well, Paul is now producing First to the Moon, The Journey of Apollo 8. It will feature extended conversations with the three astronauts who became the first humans to venture past low Earth orbit.

You can learn more about the project at Paul's Kickstarter page for the film. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by its pioneering members. 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.