Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - More From Planetfest With Andrew Chaikin and Scott Hubbard

Episode Date: August 20, 2012

Our Planetary Radio Live celebration of Mars rover Curiosity at Planetfest continues with more from space historian Andrew Chaikin, former NASA Mars czar Scott Hubbard and Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye the Science Guy. Emily breaks the news about NASA’s choice for a Discovery mission, and Bruce Betts joins Mat Kaplan for a What’s Up look at the night sky and a new space trivia contest.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello, once again, you lucky smart podcast listeners. You are going to get to hear all of the remainder of our conversation at PlanetFest a couple of weeks ago, a little more than a couple of weeks ago now, with Andrew Chaykin, Scott Hubbard, and Bill Nye the Science Guy. version of the show, but you get to hear all of it, which means that after the break in today's episode, you'll have a long stretch of listening to that conversation, a lot of questions from the audience as well. Now, here's the price of all of this. Would you consider going to planetary.org slash join, or just the homepage of the Planetary Society, planetary.org, and learning about the benefits of becoming a member of the Planetary Society, one of those people who helps make this program possible. We would love to have you join us and make you a part of everything that we do, including the show that you're about to hear.

Thanks so much for listening, and here we go. Thanks for listening, and here we go. More of Andrew Chaikin and Scott Hubbard on Planetary Radio Live. Welcome to the travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. It's hard to believe Curiosity has already been on Mars for more than two weeks. It was the day before the exhilarating touchdown of the big rover that Planetary Radio Live went on stage at PlanetFest. This week we'll present more of the great panel discussion

recorded there, which also included Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye the Science Guy. Up first, our regular conversation with the Society's Senior Editor and Planetary Evangelist, Emily Lakdawalla. Emily, great to be talking to you again. It has been since PlanetFest that we last spoke. Yeah, it has been a long time and a very busy couple of weeks. Sure has. In fact, there is some news that is breaking. Even as we record this, we don't know much, but what do we know? We do know that the next discovery mission, which is the cheapest in NASA's multi-mission line,

is going to be InSight. InSight is a Martian lander that's based upon the successful Phoenix lander, but instead of scooping at soil, it's going to drive a heat probe deep into the soil and also have a seismometer. So this is a geophysics mission. So that's pretty cool. Now, of course, I and a lot of other people were hoping for the Titan choice, but this will do. Yeah, Titan boat would have been cool. And frankly, I like the Comet Hopper just as much. So it's really tough to make these choices. I am a little bit sad for the outer planet community, but I am looking forward to InSight. We're going to learn completely unique things from this mission. And congratulations to everybody on the InSight team. Also, congratulations to everybody on the Curiosity team, which is already doing such an incredibly great job on Mars.

That's right. It's been a spectacular first couple of weeks. Now, as I'm talking with you, Curiosity hasn't yet moved, but it should be doing that soon. They did unstow the robotic arm for the first time today. They also used the laser on top of the robot's head to shoot at a rock for the first time yesterday. So they've been slowly testing out all the instruments. They're getting ready. They'll probably do their first drive this week. And we're going to get ready to go to a site

where they might investigate some rocks that were laid down in an ancient lake on Mars. Tell me a little bit more, if you know anything, about that first test of KenCam. Did they actually get some spectroscopic data out of this? Well, they haven't said that yet. What they have done is you can actually see the little holes that they fired, both at their calibration target, which is something on the rover,

and at a tiny little rock on the ground, which has its own Twitter account, which was kind of hilarious to follow this weekend. The funny thing is, you know, every time it lasers a rock, it also shoots itself in the back. What? I'm not sure I understand. Does it reflect back or something? No, no, it's for calibration. So it carries other known rock samples that every single time it shoots a rock, it also shoots at least one of these rock samples so that they can do comparisons and make sure that they understand the instrument's

performance very well. I'll be darned. I will simply recommend at this point for anybody who hasn't seen it, the video tour that you provide of Curiosity's cameras. It is on the Planetary Society YouTube page and under videos at planetary.org. And you do mention ChemCam as part of that collection. That's quite a suite of instruments, that's for sure. Emily, great to be talking to you once again, and I look forward to the next opportunity in a week. All right, see you then,

Matt. She is Senior Editor and Planetary Evangelist for the Planetary Society, and along with many other things, including contributing editor to Sky and Telescope magazine. We'll be right back to take you back a couple of weeks, maybe a little bit more, to our Planet Fest celebration when we still weren't quite sure whether Curiosity would be the great success it has become. On Saturday, August 4, we were still a day away from knowing if Curiosity, the Mars science laboratory rover, would survive her seven minutes of terror and become the newest ambassador from Earth to the red planet. I had welcomed three of Earth's most enthusiastic Martians to the stage at the Planetary Society's Planet Fest celebration in Pasadena. We started listening to the session last week and will continue it now. You can hear nearly an additional half hour of this fascinating conversation online at planetary.org slash radio. That's in the podcast version of our show. Let's rejoin space historian Andrew

Chaykin, Bill Nye the Science Guy, and former NASA Mars czar Scott Hubbard on that exciting evening. Scott Hubbard has just published Exploring Mars, a terrific new book about his 10 years at the agency. He had just told us about the tough decision he made to cancel the Mars sample return mission in the year 2000. That was tough. That was very hard. But you apparently managed to get things back on track. That was also against some odds, but you laid out some very important principles. You had a ladder to Mars. Yes, I said that rather than just going at every opportunity

with an orbiter and a lander no matter what, we had to structure a scientific program that made sense. And to really advance the understanding of Mars as a system, you needed to go to orbit, do some reconnaissance, then go to the surface and get ground truth and check it out, then go with a more capable orbiter and a more capable rover. So it's not an accident that we went from a little toaster oven sized Pathfinder rover to the 1900 pound Curiosity. That was built into the program so that we

continuously advanced our capability. Do you think we are now where you had hoped we would be when you started this effort 12 years ago? I really think so. I think, and for people in radio land, I'm holding my fingers about a quarter of an inch apart, I think we're this close to understanding habitability of Mars. So with the What do you mean habitability? The understanding of whether or not Mars was ever an abode for life. Maybe it could be today. The combination of energy and liquid water and the thing that Curiosity is going to look for, which is organic material,

complex carbon compounds that are the fingerprints of life. Andy, are we where you would have hoped we would be here in 2012? Because you've been thinking about this for a long time. You know, I've had to go through so many cycles of hope and despair and sort of resignation. And I'm back being hopeful. I have to say mostly because of what I see in private companies like SpaceX, who are rethinking the problem of how you do space flight in a way that is sustainable and affordable. And that is something that NASA, I would have hoped, could have done long ago.

It didn't work out that way. I'm glad it's happening now. And I, at the same time, I'm so conscious of the fact that Mars is a kind of a Mount Everest for the human species. And the more I find out about the difficulties of going to Mars with humans, and even with robots, I mean, I'm going to be watching tomorrow night when Curiosity lands, and I'm going to have my hands over my eyes pretty much because even though I think it's going to work, it's going to be terrifying. And I know how hard this stuff is. But, you know, I'll just tell you one little piece of the humans to Mars part of this that I didn't know. I was talking to a former NASA engineer who said to me,

you know, if they're on their way to Mars and the toilet breaks, everybody dies. And he explained to me because the toilet on a Mars ship is a crucial part of recycling water and nutrients. You can't possibly bring all of the stuff you need to survive a two and a half year voyage to Mars, a year on the surface and then survive a two and a half year voyage to Mars, a year on the surface and then back is two and a half years. And so that is so far beyond what we're able to do. And let me just, I know I'm going in about five directions at once here, but let me just add one more element to this.

I'm concerned for us as a society because I don't think that we as a culture understand how magnificent what is happening right now and what is going to happen tomorrow night. Even if it doesn't work, God forbid. We are the world leaders in something that is absolutely mind-boggling. And the fact that we have the creativity and the ingenuity to go solve these questions about what it's like on Mars, what it was like billions of years ago, to build these machines, these incredible machines, and figure out how to make them work and operate a couple hundred million miles away from the Earth,

that to me is one of the most magnificent human stories. It is a magnet for young people to go into science and engineering. And I have just a terrible fear that we don't see what we have and we're going to throw it away. Bill, you talk a lot about maintaining that leadership. Yeah, this is my worship paragraph these days. The investment in planetary science is such a good value that it's a few hundred million a year, and what you get changes everything.

It is what I like to call trickle-up economics, where you invest in a NASA center, and they hire some people, and they started on this extraordinary thing well then the high school nearby gets an infusion of science and engineering and then that affects the teachers that want to come to work there then that affects the elementary schools and that affects the people that move into that neighborhood and then that eventually affects the local university and then the university gets better grants and the grants are

more sophisticated than the people who graduate from those universities go on to start their own enterprises in that area instead of going somewhere else, and the world has changed. And so what is wonderful about planetary science is it brings out the best in us because it is so difficult. Scott, are people going to follow? I think so. You know, the robots go first. They do our dull, dirty, dangerous work. I think that humans will go. And I think that it is, in fact, in our nature to go out and explore. Not everybody does. Some people are perfectly happy staying nearby,

but other people want to see what's over that next horizon. I think that is something that's built into human nature, and I see human beings going to Mars. One of the big questions is, of course, that I always hear, is it a one-way trip or a two-way trip? I think if the government is sponsoring it, it will be we're going to send a person there and return them safely. But there are people out there that are suggesting that maybe we ought to colonize with a one-way trip. Yeah, let's do a scientific poll. How many of you would get on a one-way rocket to Mars?

Yeah, it's what, maybe a quarter, a quarter of our crowd. More of our PlanetFest discussion about the how and why of exploring Mars with Scott Hubbard, Andrew Chaikin, and Bill Nye is a minute away. This is Planetary Radio. I'm Robert Picardo. I traveled across the galaxy as the doctor in Star Trek Voyager. Then I joined the Planetary Society to become part of the real adventure of space exploration. The Society fights for missions that unveil the secrets of the real adventure of space exploration. The Society fights for

missions that unveil the secrets of the solar system. It searches for other intelligences in the universe, and it built the first solar sail. It also shares the wonder through this radio show, its website, and other exciting projects that reach around the globe. I'm proud to be part of this greatest of all voyages, and I hope you'll consider joining us. You can learn more about the Planetary Society at our website, planetary.org slash radio, or by calling 1-800-9-WORLDS. Planetary Radio listeners who aren't yet members can join and receive a Planetary Radio t-shirt. Our nearly 100,000 members receive the internationally acclaimed Planetary Report magazine. That's planetary.org slash radio.

The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. We're presenting more of our PlanetFest discussion about the exploration of Mars, recorded on August 4, the day before Curiosity successfully landed there. My guests on stage were Scott Hubbard, NASA's Mars czar until a couple of years ago, Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye, and space historian and author Andrew Chaikin. Andy grew up in the space age and even participated in the Viking landings on Mars back in 1976, when he was still not much more than a kid. You can read about it in his great book, A Passion for Mars.

I asked him about an even earlier inspiration. That was tough. That was very hard. But you apparently managed to get things back on track, and that was also against some odds. But you laid out some very important principles. You had a ladder to Mars. Yes, I said that rather than just going at every opportunity with an orbiter and a lander no matter what, we had to structure a scientific program that made sense. And to really advance the

understanding of Mars as a system, you needed to go to orbit, do some reconnaissance, then go to the surface and get ground truth and check it out, then go with a more capable orbiter and a more capable rover. So it's not an accident that we went from a little toaster oven-sized Pathfinder rover to the 1,900-pound Curiosity. That was built into the program so that we continuously advanced our capability. So do you think we are now where you had hoped we would be when you started this effort 12 years ago? I really think so. I think, and, you know, for people in radio land, I'm holding my fingers about a quarter of an inch apart,

I think we're this close to understanding habitability of Mars. So with the What do to understanding habitability of Mars. So with the... What do you mean habitability? The understanding of whether or not Mars was ever an abode for life. Maybe it could be today. The combination of energy and liquid water and the thing that Curiosity is going to look for, which is organic material, complex carbon compounds that are the fingerprints of life. Andy, are we where you would have hoped we would be here in 2012?

Because you've been thinking about this for a long time. You know, I've had to go through so many cycles of hope and despair and sort of resignation, and I'm back being hopeful. I have to say mostly because of what I see in private companies like SpaceX who are rethinking the problem of how you do spaceflight in a way that is sustainable and affordable. And that is something that NASA, I would have hoped, could have done long ago.

It didn't work out that way. I'm glad it's happening now. And at the same time, I'm so conscious of the fact that Mars is a kind of a Mount Everest for the human species. And the more I find out about the difficulties of going to Mars with humans and even with robots, I mean, I'm going to be watching tomorrow night when Curiosity lands and I'm going to Mars with humans and even with robots. I mean, I'm going to be watching tomorrow night when Curiosity lands, and I'm going to have my hands over my eyes pretty much because even though I think it's going to

work, it's going to be terrifying. And I know how hard this stuff is. But you know, I'll just tell you one little piece of the humans to Mars part of this that I didn't know. I was talking to a former NASA engineer who said to me, you know, if they're on their way to Mars and the toilet breaks, everybody dies. And he explained to me because the toilet on a Mars ship is a crucial part of recycling water and nutrients. You can't possibly bring all of the stuff you need

to survive a two and a half year voyage to Mars, a year on the surface and then back is two and a half years. And so that is so far beyond what we're able to do. And let me just, I know I'm going in about five directions at once here, but let me just add one more element to this. I'm concerned for us as a society because I don't think that we as a culture understand how magnificent what is happening right now and what is going to happen tomorrow night, even if it doesn't work, God forbid.

Even if it doesn't work, God forbid, we are the world leaders in something that is absolutely mind-boggling. And the fact that we have the creativity and the ingenuity to go solve these questions about what it's like on Mars, what it was like billions of years ago, to build these machines, these incredible machines, and figure out how to make them work and operate a couple hundred million miles away from the earth, that to me is one of the most magnificent human stories. It is a magnet for young people to go into science and engineering. And I have just a terrible fear that we don't see what we have and we're going to throw it away. Bill, you talk a lot about maintaining that leadership. Yeah, this is my

worship paragraph these days. The investment in planetary science is such a good value that it's a few hundred million a year and what you get changes everything. It is what I like to call trickle up economics

where you invest in a NASA center and they hire some people and they start on this extraordinary thing. Well, then the high school nearby gets an infusion of science and engineering and then that affects the teachers that want to come to work there, then that affects the elementary schools, and that affects the people that move into that neighborhood, and then that eventually affects the local university. And then the university gets better that affects the people that move into that neighborhood and then that eventually affects the local university and then the university gets better grants and the grants are more sophisticated and the people who are graduated from those universities go on to start their own enterprises in that area instead of going somewhere else and the

world has changed. And so what is wonderful about planetary science is it brings out the best in us because it is so difficult. These things that these people do are so extraordinary. I mean, you go, it's 14 minutes at the speed of light to find out whether or not the thing landed, whether things are okay. That is just so out of your everyday experience. And as I say, it brings out the best in us. With that said, I'm sure, Dr. Hubbard, you can enlighten us about finding gerosite, what is it, 10,000 times faster with a human than with a robot. Now, wait a second, Bill. What is gerosite? Dr. Hubbard. I'm going to pull a Bill Nye. What is Gerasa? It was found in, you know, the geologists, they love to name things after the places it was found. I think Jaro, Yarro, is a place in Spain where it was found originally.

And now you can find it not only on Earth, but you can find it on Mars. And it was one of the key signatures of a watery environment that was found by the Mars exploration rovers. Scott, are people going to follow? I think so. You know, the robots go first. They do our dull, dirty, dangerous work. I think that humans will go. And I think that it is, in fact, in our nature to go out and explore.

Not everybody does. Some people are perfectly happy staying nearby. But other people want to see what's over that next horizon. I think that is something that's built into human nature, and I see human beings going to Mars. One of the big questions is, of course, that I always hear, is it a one-way trip or a two-way trip? I think if the government is sponsoring it, it will be we're going to send

a person there and return them safely. But there are people out there that are suggesting that maybe we ought to colonize with a one-way trip. Yeah. Let's do a scientific poll. How many of you would get on a one-way rocket to Mars? Yeah, it's what, maybe a quarter, a quarter of our crowd. Speaking of our crowd. Speaking of the crowd, we're going to go to your questions. We'll only have time for two or three of them, I'm afraid. So if you do have a question for Scott Hubbard or Andrew Chaikin, please get yourself over to one of those Q&A microphones in the aisles right now.

While we wait for people to walk up there, Andy, could you take us back a few years and just mention something that you were a big part of some years ago called Mars and the Mind of Man? Oh boy, that is one of my formative experiences. I was in high school, I was in my senior year of high school in 1973 when a book was published called Mars and the Mind of Man. And that book was basically a transcript of a symposium that had been done at Caltech on the eve of Mariner 9's arrival at Mars and becoming the first spacecraft to orbit Mars and subsequently revealing Mars to be a geologic wonderland,

subsequently revealing Mars to be a geologic wonderland, a world that, contrary to what the previous flybys had suggested, was not only a moon-like expanse of craters, but was home to the largest volcano in the solar system, to a canyon system that would stretch nearly the length of the continental United States, and to ancient river valleys and many, many more wonders of geology. And in this panel discussion, in addition to Bruce Murray, who was one of the leading Mars scientists in the world. MR. One of the founders of the Planetary Society. MR.

That's right. And the other founder of the Planetary Society, Carl Sagan, was the man who I now call the poet laureate of space exploration, Ray Bradbury. And it was in the pages of that book, not only in the transcript, but in the essay that Ray wrote, in the forward to the book and in the afterthoughts, that I fell in love with him and made him my mentor. And I am so grateful to have had the chance to have worked with him back in 2000 when I was the editor of a magazine called

Space Illustrated, and I commissioned an essay from him which was called Too Soon From The Cave, Too Far From The Stars. We do have a question from the audience. Hi sir, introduce yourself. Hi, I'm Brandon Gina from Michigan Tech, actually a college student. So what I'm interested in, and I guess open Gina from Michigan Tech, actually, a college student. So what I'm interested in, and I guess open to any of you,

what makes Mars a more important target for missions than, say, Europa or Titan? What a great question. Yeah, and the other interesting places in the solar system. Scott, would you tackle that first? Sure. Well, Mars is the most Earth-like of all the planets in the solar system, Sure. Well, Mars is the most Earth-like of all the planets in the solar system, and therefore the consensus of the science community is that it is perhaps the most likely to have ever had life or possibly have life today. And an additional practical factor is you can get there for a 20-day window every 26 months.

Europa is also compelling, but it's much, much further away. So that's why we have invested this last decade in understanding Mars, and I think, frankly, we're ready to now bring some well-selected samples back. MR. Andy, Mars, Europa, why not both? MR. Because the real world says that's not an option. I mean, there was a cartoon in the New Yorker magazine the year after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. And in this cartoon, Christopher Columbus is standing in front of Queen Isabella, and she's saying to him, three ships is a lot of ships. Can't you prove the world is round with one ship? of ships. Can't you prove the world is round with one ship? And that right there sums up the fact that it's a pretty rare time when a society is willing to spend the multiple

billions of dollars that we did going to the moon. And of course on that tidal wave of exploration came missions like Voyager and Viking and so many of the others that we now look back on. I think we're now at a crossroads where we have to learn to do not only human space flight, but robotic space flight in a way that is affordable and sustainable. Having said that, we also need to reverse the very draconian budget cuts that have been levied against NASA's planetary program. And for that, I would invite you, I would actually urge you, hold on, anybody within the sound of my voice, go to planetary.org slash get hyphen involved and send an email to Congress and say we must explore. Right on.

So right on. The Planetary Society, this is something that we have done since the beginning, since 1980, is advocate for space exploration. And for those of you, for some reason, don't pore over every issue of Space News, there really is a publication called Space News. I got an op-ed published in there about this issue, that planetary exploration is such a good value that we have to do it. But furthermore, right now, there is a handful of people, many of whom will be on this dais over this evening and tomorrow, who are able to land spacecraft on Mars.

There's just a very, very unusual skill, and it's extraordinarily difficult. Even the venerable Soviet and Russian space agencies over 21 at Mars. Do you know who these people are? They're the equivalent of the gymnastic gold medalists. Dr. That's right, they really are. They've dedicated their whole lives. Dr. Thank you for the Olympic metaphor. Dr. Yes, they are the space science Olympic champions.

Dr. And let me say, as an engineer, they are some extraordinary engineers. And so we don't want to lose this capability. And I remind everybody, why are we doing this? It's because there are two questions that get all of us at some point in your life, ever since you're a little kid. Where did we come from, and are we alone? We are the first generation of humans that can really investigate this for real, and so to lose this now would just be tragic. Furthermore, the extraordinary economic benefits, I can't say enough, it will change the world.

We're going to hurry on through some additional questions here from our audience. And, sir, you're next. Please introduce yourself. I'm Fred Schaaf, and I came up a little earlier through Gemini, Apollo, Apollo-Soyuz, and all those programs. And I just wanted to get a little credit given to John Campbell in Analog and Astounding Science Fiction. John Campbell, the famous science fiction editor.

Absolutely. One of the great men for this program. Thanks. Okay. Let's go right back over to this side. Hi there. Hello. Good afternoon.

My name is Harold, and I've been a member of the Planetary Society for over 30 years. Good for you. Right on. Thank you. My question to the panel is, after Curiosity's successful landing and exploration of Gale Crater, what's the next major step we need to go to in the exploration of Mars? Scott? Well, there is one more mission in the pipeline.

It's called MAVEN. It's an atmospheric orbiter that will launch in 2013. And after that, there is unfortunately nothing in the pipeline. Now, the National Academy of Sciences recommend I spend a year and a half of my life on this committee. We recommended that the next most important thing is to start the campaign to bring a sample back from Mars. But the budgetary environment will not allow that. In fact, in the current budget, there is not even enough to keep the operating missions going. So let me second what everybody else has been saying. Get involved. Tell your Congress people that we really need to support planetary exploration.

So we're going to jump back to this side here at Planet Fest 2012. Hi. Thank you. Hi. I'm Kelly Beattie, and boy, Mars in the mind of man, I remember it well. This is for anyone. How and when do you think that the American public in particular became so risk averse and the Congress, uh, when it comes to planetary exploration, it's hard to do, uh, accidents will happen and, uh, in the early days accidents happened pretty frequently, especially with regard to Mars. When did we turn that corner and, uh, become so risk averse? Andy, would you try that philosophical one? I'll, I'll, I'll try to tackle the question from my, question from the man who gave me my start in journalism, Kelly Beatty.

I don't really know. I think what happens is that we as a culture, we get blasé so quickly. Andy, I've got to jump in. Look, everybody, the Apollo program was a result of the Cold War. Yeah. No, I — And so we ended up with this fabulous — I am a historian. I do know that.

Well, we ended up with this fabulous space capability. Yeah. And then what to do with it. And this is where we're at the — No, no, no. I agree with you on that. It was — Apollo was a unique moment in our history, and it will never be like that again. Let's hope not.

We don't have another Cold War. Let's hope not. But I think part of the problem is that we have to — Yeah. Apollo was a unique moment in our history, and it will never be like that again. Let's hope not. We don't have another Cold War. But I think part of the problem is that we've become a society that doesn't allow failure. Oh, stick with me. Oh, no, just watch me. We need to be able to fail. Well, you know, I look at the sales of my last few books, and I can speak to that, too.

But we need to be able to fail to be able to advance, right? Yeah, can I add a comment on that one? I had the responsibility to be the only NASA person on the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. I spent seven months of my life trying to figure out why seven people died and we lost the orbiter. And one thing that I learned from that is that when you take risk with taxpayers' money, there are a different set of criteria that get involved than if you take risk yourself. Ten percent of all the people who try to climb Mount Everest die. It's a one-inch story in the paper, and it's gone the next day.

So I think that these private entrepreneurs probably will be able to take more risk. And I think that the issue we need to address with government funding is whether we take prudent risk or not. We've lost missions because we didn't clearly think about what we're doing. So Scott, let me ask you, so when you say risk, is that a euphemism for people dying in space? I think that if you have a program that's pushing the frontier, that thing, their accidents are going to happen and we have to be prepared for that. So, well, just to, I was at Planet Fest 1999 and this was for the Mars Polar Lander and it landed all right. But it crashed.

That was faster, better, deeper. So anyway, this was, things can go wrong. So this, waiting for the Curiosity Rover to land successfully, we are. We're in a different place though now than we were then in the sense that those folks on that project were put in a box that they were not allowed to escape from. And the only way they got out was by taking foolish risk. Right. Well, yeah, they didn't have time or money to do end-to-end testing, right? That's one big piece.

Let me put this, and again, we don't know what's, how this is going to turn out tomorrow night. We all hope it is going to turn out tomorrow night. We all hope it's going to work. But what would we all say to a congressional panel if curiosity fails, if it doesn't even make it to the surface in one piece? Those of you who are here, who've taken your time to be at this Planet Fest, who love exploration, who are excited by it. You know, you guys have to help spread that message that this is worth doing even if we fail sometimes. Anybody see the terrific episode of West Wing

where President Bartlett has this group of kids in the White House and a Mars mission fails? And he makes this terrific statement about why we need to keep on keeping on. It's pretty good. Look it up. We are, I will say, and this won't be heard in the show, we are way over time with this segment, but it's such a good discussion. I hope you guys don't mind sticking around for a few extra minutes.

We're going to get through, hopefully very quickly, the six people who are still in line with questions, and then we're going to move right on because we all want to get on to dinner. So we're going to jump back to this side. Sir, hi. Introduce yourself, please. Hi, I'm Andrew Colgavea. I'm from the Bay Area up in Livermore. So I was wondering, a lot of people don't support a lot of the space travel because except for the curiosity, the human nature, the curiosity of what's out there, a lot of people don't see the benefits of space travel and Mars exploration to the normal people of Earth. 10, 25, 50 years, if we keep on exploring Mars and other things in space, where are

some benefits that Earth people can have from all this exploration, more physical benefits? Well, first of all, we don't know. Secondly, look around. Everything you see in this room is better because of space exploration. The radio sounds better. The microphones are better. Some of the listeners to this show might be listening to satellite radio. And by analogy, there's this infamous story where the congresswoman said, well, we don't need to fund any more weather satellites because I've got the Weather Channel. We don't need to fund any more weather satellites because I've got the weather channel. You see, lady, like the weather channel gets its information, you see it's a cause and effect.

So the benefits of space exploration are extraordinary. That I can guarantee. Andy? Can I? I think one of the most important things that space exploration does for us is it teaches us that when we think we have it all figured out, we're wrong. Mars is a great teacher. People thought at every turn in the history of Mars exploration that they knew what Mars would be like, and they've been wrong.

Every time we've looked closer at Mars, we've seen a world that nobody could predict. And I think that the current state of our culture, where everybody says, don't confuse me with the facts, my mind's made up, right? We're so polarized. We all think we know what it's about. We need exploration as a way of lifting us out of that blinders on mentality and expanding our awareness. Scott, sure, go ahead. Scott, I'm a skeptical congressman.

I got no major contractors in my district. What do you tell me about why we need to go to Mars? I give you, I think, five reasons I've collected over the last 30-plus years. One is national interest. If we stop right now, there are plenty of other countries out there who have announced their intentions to go to the moon and on to Mars. The Europeans are desperately trying to fund their ExoMars mission. The Chinese have a major space program.

India has a major space program. And we've built this incredible capability, and we're just going to walk away from it and let somebody else fill that void because they will fill it. Secondly, look at return on investment. There have been a lot of studies done. Most conservatives say for every dollar you put in in space exploration, you get around $2 back. That's very good, particularly for a government investment. International cooperation for peaceful purposes.

Sixteen countries built the International Space Station. Where else can you find former foes like us in the Soviet Union working together? Yeah, good. working together. And one that my colleague, the science guy here, is so well known for, which is the power of space exploration, and Mars is out of this pointy end of the spear there, to inspire students in science and technology and engineering and the technical fields. And Bill is one of the best there is at that.

Can I, again, such a good discussion. Let me give you inside information. We'll run all of this or nearly all of this, probably not on the radio because there we can only go for 28 minutes and 50 seconds, but we can do as long as we want in the podcast. So maybe for the week of the 20th, if you go online, we'll try and include all of this. So you've heard it already, but you can tell your friends, that's me cheering. Okay, we're going to move back over to this side.

Hi, sir. Hi, my name is George Frangos, and my question is regarding the exploration for life on Mars. Has any modeling been done to examine the possibility that underwater caverns full of water, or perhaps lakes, rivers, and such things might exist on Mars? And if NASA has done any modeling to that effect. Scott, water underground caverns? Well, yeah, well, water underground has been bandied about in the Mars science community for decades. The early models said it's probably there, but maybe kilometers deep, miles and miles deep.

Now we have all of this data that shows that there's billions of tons of ice frozen into the top three feet of Mars, and we see what look like flows, flash floods, down canyons. The idea that there's water close to the surface is becoming much more well accepted. To look for this, there have been two attempts, two experiments, using sounding radar. This is one of the things you look for. You look through a reflection of the radar from orbit back up to look for the interface, the difference in density between the dirt and the water. What they found are glaciers.

They have not yet found indication of water pools of water underground, but I think the next generation of radar, and maybe we'll even take one of the surface, could find this. In the interest of time, we're going to jump right back over to you, Miss. Hi, I'm Amy Sherr-Tidle. I blog at Vintage Space. My question is about looking at, kind of piggybacking off of what Kelly said about risk averse, what are your thoughts about going back to a faster, better, cheaper approach to space exploration? Could more smaller missions with potentially a higher fail rate teach us more

that we could then use to make these big flagship missions at higher, better cost? The problem is that it depends on whether you're saying faster, better, cheaper the way you said it, which is to say let's just try to do this less expensively and see how we do. But that's not what we do in this culture. We put people in a double bind and we say you can't spend as much money, you don't have as much time, it has to be better than the last mission, and by the way, don't fail. Scott, you write a lot about... Don't be nervous, but don't make any mistakes.

Right. Scott, you write a lot about this in your book, Exploring Mars. Yeah. Yeah, faster, better, cheaper was never completely defined by the guy who said it, the former administrator of NASA. But it was turned into it's okay to be sloppy, and that's what led to people being put in a box. They couldn't push back.

They had to fix delivery and everything, and it was a mess. So what we had to go back to was systems engineering, and it sounds boring, but there's a reason that it exists. It's the glue that holds all these piece parts together. It's a block diagram. Yeah, it's The block diagram. Yeah, the block diagram. So let me take a slightly different tack than what Andy took. There is a hierarchy that stood the test of time for 50 years in exploring other worlds.

First you whiz by, you fly by, like we're going to do to our poor little demoted planet Pluto. It's the first of the Plutoids. It's the first of the Plutoids. It's a planet. Go ahead, Scott, Scott, Scott. Demoted, demoted. Anyway, we fly by, then we orbit, then we do detail analysis in situ there, you know, present,

and then we bring samples back because it's the only way you can get hundreds of investigators and dozens of laboratories. Nobody knows how to shrink a particle accelerator to the size of a shoe box. So there is a reason that bringing samples back, which is a complicated activity, bubble to the top of what the National Academy of Sciences spent two years thinking about. Hi, sir.

Do you have a question for our panel? Yes. Uh, I'm Wallace Hooser. I'm a professor of radiology at the university of Texas in Dallas. Um, a couple of just quick points. The reason we're risk adverse and we weren't in the sixties, the voters were the people who landed at Normandy and landed at Iwo Jima. They understood that tough things require sacrifice. We, over the last 40 years, have become very soft.

We're not them. Trust me, I suspect we're still them. We just don't know it. Maybe in the next 10 years we're going to get a test. I've got a feeling the whole world is. Second thing, when somebody asks you about what has NASA done, next time you're with your doctor, ask your doctor, what things has NASA done for medicine? And I will guarantee you that he'll say, are you kidding? He'll

say, you see this? Everything is digital. We wouldn't have it without research done by medicine. CT scanners, ultrasound, echo hearts, heart patches, MRI scanners. I could keep going on and on and on. This all, if you ask a medical community, they'll tell you. They're big fans of what NASA does in space research. The final reason, medicine knows how to deal with Congress. They only listen to two things, numbers and money. They're not there to do God's work. They're numbers and money. It's all about them getting reelected.

I got a turnpike moved in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It's going to come through our neighborhood because I showed up at every single hearing and drove them crazy until they listened to me. We need to have something similar to the NRA. The NRA is the most effective lobby out there. We need to develop something so that they will listen. Okay, thank you. Wally Hooser, ladies and gentlemen. Go get them! And our last question on this side.

Hi, Miss. Hi. April Eden from Fan Girl Academy. I have a question that kind of involves a lot of the new departments doing independent launches, like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic. I'm wondering how realistic and how long do you think it will be until filmmakers can actually go to, say, Mars or the moon and shoot, like, a found footage type thing? Do you think that, you know, that's something that we can do in the future? Well, and let me just put it this way, gentlemen.

I'll broaden that a little bit. Will art follow science and engineering into space? Hasn't it already? Oh, sure. But, you know, the question is at what price point? And, you know, in my personal quest to be the first space historian in space, I'm hoping that the price comes down to the point where folks like me can afford it. There will certainly be, if all goes well in the next few years and SpaceX manages to, people like SpaceX, manage to get an orbital human flight capability and Virgin Galactic will be doing suborbital, you know, we'll see an explosion in space tourism,

but only time will allow it to be something that the average person can afford. Well, if I may say, do you ever use a lipstick cam? Not yet. But you know what I mean? So there's a camera you set up. You're not going to be near it. You put it up on the instrument panel of an airplane,

and you watch the pilot as, but you're on the ground. You're waiting for your video to come back, and then you produce your show, right? Well, we are at a time where you can send your own camera up into very high altitudes, nominally above the Kármán limit, above the Earth's atmosphere and take these extraordinary pictures just on your own. With a balloon. With a balloon. And then you'll be able to do it with small rockets and so on. And this will be, this will open up a new world for video and film making.

With that said, going to another planet is a whole other thing. When there's no atmosphere, when there's no ability to get there without first being able to escape the Earth's gravity, these will take it, this is a whole other level of commitment. However, it won't happen unless you dream about it. So way to go. And sir, you have the honor of asking the last question for our panel. Well, as that honor, Larry Imperiali, long time space advocate and member of the Society. I won't preach to the choir. I'll say that we did lose a lot of opportunities in the past.

I was not crazy about the space shuttle program and the International Space Station. I don't really know how closer that got us together, especially now with what's going on in Syria and the lack of cooperation with the Soviet Union. I do believe things have been accomplished, but I don't think we got our dollars worth. Now is the time we really got to get together, focus on something that's really going to make a difference in our lifetime.

And I absolutely support this initiative to Mars, especially the lady that spoke about getting eventually, and I think it's unrealistic, unfortunately, by 2030 to get a human there. But I do hope we push for that sample return that might bring us closer together to find something that will galvanize the world to look that we are not alone. And this is what I wanted to make as a statement, and I just wondered what your opinion was of whoever would like to answer this. Scott, do you have any comment to make about that?

That's a great big-picture comment, and I endorse the idea that we need to have these grand ideas, and grand ideas have the effect of pulling people together because they can see a sense of purpose. I think that obviously scientifically Mars sample returns the next thing to do. I think that we are at a tipping point in human exploration

that some people realize and others don't, where things, companies like SpaceX and the other winners of this commercial crew are going to provide a capability that will expand the number of people who've been to space by orders of magnitude. And I think it's going to become a shared experience as opposed to something that where we see a tiny, small group doing, and it's going to become more us. And I think as us becomes a space-faring nation and a space-faring world, it will become part of our common experience. And that will raise our expectations of what's possible,

and that will make the world better for everyone. Andy, I want to give you the last word. Andy, I want to give you the last word. Hope and excitement are the antidotes to fear and insularity, and exploration is all about excitement and hope and what makes us feel really alive as humans. So let's go, Curiosity. Yeah, absolutely. let's go curiosity.

Absolutely. Space historian and author Andrew Chaykin, joined by former NASA Mars program leader Scott Hubbard and Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye the Science Guy. Bruce Betts is up next. So we're back at the Planetary Society this week. It's time for What's Up with Bruce Betts. The best of the excitement is over, the landing, although certainly the excitement continues with curiosity. Oh, it does. Now we actually do the science part.

Oh, that's right. There was all of that. There is another part of the mission, turns out. It's a wee bit slower and more methodical. I'm ready to jump up and down and continue cheering when, you know, Kem Kam zaps a rock or a Martian or something. And how about those images? They're beautiful.

They're beautiful. They're beautiful, man. Hey, speaking of Mars, you can see it, your very self, with your very own eyes in the evening sky. It's a cool little cluster going on in the evening sky over in the west, west, southwest. in the evening sky over in the west, west, southwest, pretty low down. But in the early evening, you can check out Mars. And it just passed through. It lined up with Spica, the bluish star that was below it, Mars, reddish,

and Saturn, yellowish above it. And now they're forming, not surprisingly, a triangle. Hard to avoid. Being three of them not lined up anymore. But all kind of clustered. And if you pick up this show right after it comes out on the 21st, they are hanging out with the moon, too, forming more of a rectangle-y square thing. You said Mars is the reddish one, the one with the new little six-wheeled thing on it. Yeah, just look for curiositydish one, the one with the new little six-wheeled thing on it. Yeah, just look for curiosity. That's the one with Mars. Yeah, that's Mars. In the pre-dawn, there's also

groovy brightness going on. We've still got Jupiter and Venus there, Venus being the brighter, lower-down object in the east, Jupiter higher above, and just making for a lovely kind of collaboration. That's not the right word, but yeah, and just making for a lovely kind of collaboration. That's not the right word. But yeah, they're collaborating together with Orion, and the Orion constellation is over to the right, to use a technical term, from the planets, and it's the top of Orion.

It's like Orion sticking his... Wait, that's going to sound odd, but Orion sticking his head up in between Venus and Jupiter. Where the sun don't shine. No, no, no, no, no. It's just his head. He's looking around at the planets. So anyway, moving on to this week in space history.

Voyager 2 really liked doing things during this week in space history. 35 years ago, 1977, Voyager 2 launched. Four years later, 1981, did its flyby of Saturn during this week. And then another, I can do math, eight years later, it flew by Neptune in 1989 during this week. Random Space Fact! do math. Eight years later, it flew by Neptune in 1989 during this week. Random space fact. That was lovely. But also, here is the same kind of musical rendition from our friends in the High Fidelity Quartet. Random space fact. Space fact. Random Space Facts Space Facts Wow, you really worked to make me sound really, really bad.

You do pale by comparison, I'm afraid. Wow, thanks for that. All hail high fidelity. That was impressive. So Gale Crater. It's been in the news lately. You may have heard about it. It's where that Curiosity thing we mentioned

landed in Gale Crater. It is 154 kilometers in diameter. That's about 96 miles. That's big. In terms of the area of Gale Crater, it's about the combined area of Connecticut and Rhode Island. So I'm going to propose that we make it a state. I don't want to lose 50 because 51 is just not as classy. Can we drop Rhode Island maybe? I guess we'll find out if we have any Rhode Island listeners. I mean, seriously, it's really small.

Why don't we combine it? We can have a nice short-named state. Connecticut, Rhode Island. Road, Connecticut, Island. That's a good idea. Right. Yeah, I'm just full of good ideas today. I'll let us go on to the trivia contest.

I had mentioned to you that the International Astronomical Union had given the official name Aeolus Mons to the Mountain Engale Crater that will be the target of Curiosity after it landed, but that NASA has been applying an unofficial name, which I've been fascinated that they continue to apply in their press conferences and otherwise. And I asked, what is that name and who is it named after? How'd we do, Matt? Really big response to this. But it was Ron Brown who got chosen by Random.org, and he said the unofficial name, that unofficial name, Mount Sharp. And as you know, and as we were also told by Rennie Christopher,

Mount Sharp, named that by NASA after the geologist Dr. Robert Sharp, best known for once having been celebrity planetary radio announcer Bruce Betts' professor. Yes, yes, I'm sure that's how everyone thinks of him. Rennie also mentions that, yeah, he may have lost a mountain, but he's gained a crater, because I guess there was a nearby crater. Yes, yes, it's a whole terminology thing. Yes, yes. It's a whole terminology thing. Officially, in terminology land, you can name craters after people on Mars, but you cannot name mountains after people on Mars. But they're still calling it Mount Sharp. Yeah, I did field geology with the man. You and a couple of other listeners. I mean, one of them was Bob Myers, who also had him as a Caltech geology professor, and there was at least one other, although I didn't pull that one in. So he must have been quite a guy.

He was darn impressive the way he'd take you to all the lovely hell holes that geologists like to visit and then just read the terrain around you. He was like a geomorphology god. He also has a couple of really cool books, at least a couple of geology and Southern California field guides. So if you're ever down here and feel like staring at cliff faces and the like, he's got some great guides that you can follow on your drives. Nice that you feel so good about him, you who is more astronomer than geologist. It's true, and I learned that by hanging out with people like Bob Schar. Although the geomorphology I could handle. It was the rock naming, the obsessive

rock naming. That was where I was. And astronomers have comfortable chairs. It's true. And when they are sleeping, they often sleep in beds. I like that part. No scorpions. Oh, yeah.

God, I hated those things. We're going to send Ron Brown a Fisher space pen inscribed, engraved with Planetary Radio, Planetary Society. Let's give somebody else a chance to win one of those. All right. So if you want to stay home in your bed, but you want to send a robotic geologist to Mars, let's say, for example, Curiosity. In fact, let's say, Curiosity, how long an arm do you put on it?

Okay, let me be clearer. How long is the reach of the MSL Curiosity arm from the front of the rover body? Okay. Go to planetary.org slash radio, find out how to enter. Good one. You have until, let's see, what would it be? The 27th of August, 2012 at 2 p.m. Pacific time to get us this answer. All right, everybody go out there, look up the night sky and think about Pahoehoe and A'a. Oh, Mahalo. Mahalo. Mahalo. It's good to be back from vacation.

And sitting across from Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society, he joins me every week for What's Up. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California and made possible by the Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation and by the members of the Planetary Society. We also thank the sponsors of PlanetFest, including NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, bringing the universe to you, along with landing Curiosity on Mars. Space Exploration Technologies, better known as SpaceX, designing, manufacturing,

and launching the world's most advanced rockets and spacecraft. And XCOR Aerospace, new technology of space, now building the Lynx suborbital spaceship. Clear skies, everyone.