Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - NASA’s Red Planet Rick and Putting Humans on Mars

Episode Date: August 21, 2019

Rick Davis is the perfect person to co-lead NASA’s Mars Human Landing Sites Study. No one is more devoted to putting human bootprints on the Red Planet. He returns to Planetary Radio for this inspiring and informative conversation about our progress. Bruce Betts leads off What’s Up with another brief LightSail 2 update. The Planetary Society’s solar sailing cubesat continues to raise its orbit. Learn more about this week’s guests and topics at:  http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/2019/0821-2019-rick-davis-humans-on-mars.htmlSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

NASA's Red Planet Rick, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. Rick Davis is back. I don't know anyone who has invested more time and sweat equity in getting humans to Mars. He is the Assistant Director for Science and Exploration in NASA's Science Mission Directorate. But that only begins to tell you about what he has done for the agency over many years. He spent three of those years working at Star City in Russia

to get American astronauts into and back from space in Soyuz capsules. astronauts into and back from space in Soyuz capsules. And he was one of the very few International Space Station CAPCOMs, or capsule communicators, at the Johnson Space Center who was not an astronaut. He worked with scores of astronauts during his time there. And now, among other things, he co-leads NASA's Mars Human Landing Sites Study. Later, Bruce Betts will join me for this week's What's Up and a brief light sail update. I had just finished showing Rick Davis around Planetary Society headquarters, including our area devoted to the light sail project, when we sat down for this great conversation. Rick, welcome back to Planetary Radio and welcome to our headquarters here in Pasadena. Matt, it is wonderful to be here and an enormous congratulations to you guys on the successful mission and doing some of the innovative stuff that you all have been doing, including crowdsourcing.

It's really cool and you all should be incredibly proud of it. Thank you, sir. Yeah, coming from a pro like you, that means even more. No, no, no. It's really, it's innovative. And, you know, it really speaks to the massive capabilities that we all collectively are building in space that I think sometimes maybe we don't appreciate how massive those are in terms of what they're enabling us to do. That's a good tease for the rest of this conversation. I mean, we'll talk about some of the difficulties as well, but there is so much that's good that's going on. Yeah. I think you would agree. Yeah.

I want to say, first of all, I love your Twitter handle. Okay, thank you. At Red Planet Rick. That's very appropriate. Yeah. And we'll put a bunch of this stuff up. We'll put links up to your Twitter, and we'll put stuff up to the Landing Site Study group and things like that. landing site study group and things like that? And if I might, one thing that's really exciting to me about like the EDRED Planet Rec, for example, or any of these mechanisms, or like

coming and doing a wonderful podcast with you, is that NASA alone is not going to do Mars. NASA with international partners is going to be a lot of non-traditional players coming in here that we really don't even know how to do yet. And we need ideas. And so it's a two-way conversation. That's really crucial. So like, for example, in the Twitter thing, we are really seeing some great ideas coming in from that. Really? Yeah. And, you know, I just think collectively, we'll figure out how to do some really cool things at Mars. Speaking of crowdsourcing, yeah. Yeah. It's been three years since you were last on Planetary Radio. I don't know if you realize that. I think it was on the panel that I was

moderating at the Humans to Mars Summit, which I saw you at again just a couple of months ago. Are we three years closer to putting boots on Mars? I don't know if it's three years closer, but we are definitely closer. We are learning. When we first did the initial architectures out to Mars, they were trying to put all the pieces. I would say actually the hard part about Mars, there's actually two parts that's hard about Mars. Number one, it's not the technology. The technology is challenging, but we know how to do that. Number one is a belief issue that it's too hard. And the real problem with that is that if you have that belief, you don't go to the next

step, which is what really amazingly talented people do, which is actually start breaking the problem down. So we have to do that. And the next piece about Mars that's actually challenging is that you don't go to an end state. Real exploration never says, I'm going to go from never being on Antarctica to all of a sudden having a city at McMurdo and then having a base at South Pole. That was not even envisionable, if you will, when Amundsen actually did the first push down to the South Pole. You need to systematically start doing what you can do and start making it possible. And so then you phase in these other things. And it's really the phasing in

that's the challenging part in figuring out how you do that. And that's where you need a lot of creative ideas there that will really allow us to go do this sooner than later. Yeah, it's just in recent weeks, as we've all been talking Apollo again, and getting to talk to some of the historians and my colleague Casey Dreyer and folks like that, where it just becomes more and more apparent. The JFK, when he set us on course to the moon, was either badly misinformed or crazy because it kind of addresses what you're talking about. Nobody knew how to do this. No one knows.

And yet they did it. That's right. You know, when Lewis and Clark set out to go to the Pacific, they did not know all the steps. They knew what they had to do to be self-sufficient, and they were also remarkably versatile people. But they just got going, and then they start piecing something. And there is a piece of that which is maybe a little unsettling. Sure. It's dangerous.

It's dangerous. But that's actually what real exploration is. Sure. It's dangerous. It's dangerous. But that's actually what real exploration is. And I would say that, to get back to your original question, we are learning all these pieces now and really coming up, I believe, with some really great ideas about how you can sequence it in a way that gets us going and also where the risks are not too great.

And you don't needlessly put human lives at risk. But there's going to be risk, and we just have to start doing it. And if I might, for me personally working Mars all the time, there's actually like two buckets of risk that I worry about. There are the risks that we know about, and we try to mitigate them down as much as we can. Those are the known unknowns? That's right.

Okay. That's right. Then there's the risks we don't know about because we actually never go. Right, right. And that set of risks can kill people too. Coming up with maybe less ambitious initial missions is a way to start really understanding those risks. And we know this in spades because when we did the first expeditions to ISS, those crew members knew that they were flushing out that second bucket of risks and really informing how we do that.

And by getting going, and it was clunky at first, but we learned how to do that. And then really, it paid for an amazing program that's there. Mars, only the same thing. And if I had to, crystal ball is very murky, but if I had to make a bet, orbital missions are probably what we will end up doing first, because that's really next, slightly next generation ISS, if you take care of the logistics supply chain. And sending human beings 220 million miles away, and actually having them successfully come back, maybe remotely operating stuff on the surface of the planet and doing science in a region of space that human beings have never been in will be so culture-altering. It's hard to even imagine it since you're talking about the Apollo anniversary.

It's every bit of like what they did. They actually did it around the moon before they tried to land. Yeah, yeah. I was thinking of Apollo 8 and Apollo 10. That's right, exactly. And everybody, the question that everybody always asked the Apollo 10 astronauts was, didn't it kill you not to go that last mile? But I'm sure they were thinking that this was a part in the path to making that all possible.

That's what they said. Yeah, and that is really key. And we just have to really kind of maybe step it down a little bit in terms of the initial expectations. But if we do that, and then we'll be surprised. In the short run, it'll go a little slower. Medium and long term, it'll go so much faster because we actually understood that second bucket of risks. And then we could manage them in a much better, safer way, I would even say, to enable significant exploration of our second planet. You're addressing so many of the things that I wanted to ask you about.

I'm going to take some stuff out of the order. Well, because you talked about the ISS and how it was clunky at first. I think that's the word you used. What have we learned on the International Space Station that's going to help us get humans to Mars and perhaps to the moon first? We'll talk about that too later. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think sometimes human exploration in space underestimates the value of the space station. The space station is occupied 24-7, 365 days a year. But only for the last 20 years. Yeah, yeah, just the last 20 years.

We've learned so much about keeping people alive and productive in a really hostile environment. And actually, there is a wonderful statistic that I think is really important. Because a lot of times, if you were sitting in the Houston Flight Control, which I did for years, if there was a mantra, it would be, in space is dangerous, on the surface is safe. You have to be careful about those mantras or those paradigms, right? Because really what they're saying is on the surface of a planet that we evolved over billions of years, a planet that is by definition designed, it seems like designed to create and sustain life in ways that is just miraculous.

I'm actually surprised the number of people who take that paradigm, move it to Mars and say, in space is dangerous, on the surface is safe. And it's like they forget that we're talking an alien planet that in some respects, until we learn to master it or really learn to live there and use it as it is, not as we want it to be, that it is trying to kill us. I find it amazing that we have, I think we last calculated 60,000 human days in space, zero, of course, on the surface of Mars. The space station, to get to your point, is actually taught us how to live in zero gravity in ways that 30, 40 years ago seemed incredible, but now it's almost commonplace. And so the part where you

go out to Mars and come back, we actually know that from a lot of what the space station has taught us and is teaching us to this day, whether it be how you exercise to keep bones and muscles from atrophying, how you keep crews happy and productive in an extremely hostile environment, to actually how you aggregate pieces in space. I mean, it used to be we always tried to fit everything into one fairing. And we've learned in space you can hook this stuff up and actually have a lot of flexibility in the vehicle.

And that flexibility actually helps when you have, say, a fire like we did on the Mir space station. We worked around it because we had modules that were compartmentalized that you could actually keep running, even despite the fact that you lost one. And so we're learning how to work in that environment, and the space station is completely enabling for us to do that. There's probably even more that we can do with it, but as we get closer to actually sending people to Mars,

it is a workhorse for actually enabling that. What about even the simplest mechanical stuff that presents a huge challenge in space. And I'm thinking of like big bearings, like the bearings that the big solar panels for the ISS are mounted on. Have we gotten better at building stuff like that so that it'll run and keep its ability to reposition those things for years at a time? So the good news is that it's a little bit like sending science satellites out there. Once you get them off this planet and you get them through the ascent phase, they actually are pretty tough. You know, the environment is not that harsh.

And so for Space Station, we used to think, oh, it's like a nightmare. We had all of these spacewalks we thought we were going to have to be doing. I bet we haven't done a fifth of them. Really? Because we've just, once you get it up there. For maintenance. Yeah, for maintenance and that kind of thing. I don't know the exact number, but it is a much, much smaller number than what we ever thought it was going to be. And that just speaks to the fact

that it's not that bad of an environment once you get in there and really know how to do that. And so, yeah, you run into some problems, but human beings are getting really good about building equipment that works in a zero-gravity environment where you have real fast temperature swings and that kind of thing. We've learned how to come way past that learning curve. This is exactly what I was getting at. That's very reassuring to hear. I am also fascinated by the role that you play at NASA. And you've spent so much of your life facilitating communication. I mean, at one time as the CAPCOM, the person who was responsible for talking to people on the International Space Station. And it just seems like keeping people talking is such a big part of your job now.

I mean, you're in the Science Mission Directorate. Hawking is such a big part of your job now. I mean, you're in the science mission directorate. You have hands reaching out to every part of NASA and beyond because of, I assume, the coordination that it's going to take to get us to Mars. It's a family that does Mars. Our team is part of that family. And really, I would say a couple things. If you go back to my original premise that Mars is not that hard technically, but it's really a belief issue. So it's really important to be actually getting ideas out there. It may

even be half-baked ideas sometimes, but that's part of the creative process, right? You know, you got to get them out there and then you really want to vet them. And so you need people, you need a two-way conversation. So for me, communication is really about trying to find the family, build it up, find the ideas, and actually really start converging on a plan that works for Mars as Mars is, given all the challenges it represents. And that's going to take ideas from all across this planet to really go figure out how we start to live on our second planet too. And so communication is really key. I have to tell you though, because I was actually talking to seventh and eighth graders like literally two days ago. It is also totally cool when you talk

with kids because they want and they live and breathe that challenge. And frankly, I get more out of seeing their enthusiasm for the future and for what we're actually all collectively are beginning to make possible than anything. And I sit in those classes with the kids, and I will tell you, every time I'm in there, I'm going, one of these kids, if not several of them, could actually be walking on Mars. When you got here, I was talking with an intern who's a JPL. He just graduated from the University of Iowa, going to go to Iowa State now, wants to be an astronaut. He had that enthusiasm. And I knew that you'd be a good person for him to talk to. Well, no, I tell you, so we actually talk with – we've been talking with interns at literally all the NASA centers that are involved – that are or will be involved with human spaceflight to Mars.

And I'm always astounded because, you know, you go into those things like we just went to Goddard for the first time. Goddard's a wonderful center. It was brand new that we were doing this thing. I was hoping for maybe five, 10 people to be there. But I have to tell you, there were 150 amazingly bright and talented kids there, you know, that were there. And they were asking, they were sitting on the floor, they're in the doorways, and they were drilling us with questions. And it's not a one-way transition. They were asking questions that really were very thought-provoking. So I'll give you an example of one. I am so used to doing shuttle missions and ISS missions, you know, so we

worry about a doc on this thing. And so one of the questions was, well, what about a psychiatrist on a Mars mission? Because we treat mental health as the same thing as physical health. And the really good question is probing, because on a Mars mission, as you well know, three years long, the body can degrade and the mind can degrade, right? And having the skill sets on the crew that goes, that can handle that is totally good. And I love the question because I personally had maybe not weighted it enough in my own head in terms of the skill sets. And so these kids are really... Another one they asked, which I totally love, and hopefully I'm not going on too long. No, it's okay. Another one they asked that I totally love is, well, how does sending humans to Mars rate relative to taking care of the planet?

Which I've heard you talk about, and you have a really good answer for this, because if we're going to live effectively on Mars, we're going to have to do a lot of the things that we need to do back here. You're amazing. Will you remember? So it's actually two parts. If you don't mind, I'd like to amplify on it. Yeah, go ahead.

So the first part is that I was trained as an engineer. I have a lot of exposure on the science side. But really, everyone who's in this kind of business, there's a lot of engineering and science people. And if there was one rule that you're taught in school, it's like you do not make decisions on one data point. make decisions on one data point. We manage this, realizing we have to manage this amazing life-giving planet that is really a miracle with one data point, what we know on this planet. The only other data point we can get in our solar system where we can put humans on the surface and study them extensively is Mars. And it's incredible that billions of years ago, Mars probably looked a lot like Earth with oceans, glaciers, and maybe even had blue skies, whatever. And it slowly lost its atmosphere,

slowly it cooled down, and eventually it became essentially a frozen planet. We really need to understand those mechanisms so that we can really take care of this planet. And that means you put a climatologist, it means you put geologists so that you can really take care of this planet. That means you put a climatologist. It means you put geologists so that you can understand the historic record. That means you put astrobiologists on there eventually so you can really get in there and understand it. That's part one. Part two is it is an extremely unforgiving environment.

Could we build homes that are completely recycling or close to being completely recycling on this planet? Absolutely. But sometimes the human being in the creative process needs a sort of kick in the pants. And you and I just talked about it. Frontiers do not allow for complacency. They kill you if you become complacent. And so on a frontier, you do not have the luxury of saying, well, maybe we'll do this with the solar arrays, or maybe we'll do this in terms of recycling our food container or our urine or whatever, right? On Mars, you have to do it. And so by learning to live responsibly in that environment, it will have massive ramifications

for how we do it. And it's not just on the planet. It's actually on the vehicle that goes out, the Mars transfer vehicle, we call it, But it's really the mothership, right? You know, that thing is you're really going to be trying to recycle it. Trash becomes a resource in these environments. And really, we know that on this planet. But, you know, it's kind of easy to forget sometimes. Sure, yeah. You know, how many times do I toss a thing, a bottle of plastic, when really I shouldn't be doing that, right?

But in Mars, you don't have that luxury. No. You have to do it. And I just think of the example that astronauts on Mars and on their way to Mars will set in that way because they have to reuse everything. That's right. Every possible resource. That's right.

And maybe grow some of their own food as they're doing it. Oh, you're totally right. In fact, we had a talk yesterday where we had a woman who's actually studying farming, you know, eventually for Mars. I see that as a critical element. It's a critical element on this planet. Yeah, sure. It's just that when you live in cities and it shows up, you know, at a grocery store, you know, you kind of forget that, right? But it is going to be critical there. And actually, it's not just for the mass and how much it costs to get it there.

But, you know, frankly, human beings grew up with plants. You know, when on the space station, it always amazed me because when we – I would be there for like when the Progress supply ships would come up. And the Russians do a really good job of putting fruit right on top of the hatch. So when you open the hatch, you smell fresh fruit. It's like getting a fruit basket in the mail. They talk about it all the time. It's exactly, that's a perfect analogy for it. And they totally love it. And it's going to be the same in space, where you don't have those things, and you're going to want that as well.

I want to go back to the question you got from that sharp young person about sending a psychiatrist or psychologist along as part of the crew. And before I do that, the intern that I mentioned here, because I know he's a regular listener, I have to say his name is Zach Lupin. Yeah, okay, great. So hello, Zach. It was great to meet him, too. He's a good guy. This is another one that I don't have on my cheat sheet here, but you made me think of this. I've met a lot of astronauts.

I'm very fortunate. You've met a lot of astronauts. I'm very fortunate. You've met many, many more than I have. I have seen this evolution in astronauts from the first guys, because they were all guys, who had the right stuff, still have it, to the astronauts of today, who are still these utterly brilliant, capable people, but there's a difference in attitude. And they just seem to be people, I'll put it this way, they are the nicest people I've ever met. And it's not that the first guys weren't, but these people are just so easy to get along with. Conscious decision by NASA as they choose these people because they have to live together in the ISS or maybe on their way to Mars for two years?

I love that question. And so a couple of things I would say is that when we originally were doing the initial missions or space missions, whether it be Gemini, Apollo, or whatever, right? Those were very short duration missions. And really the challenging part was the ascent entry and really pilots were like perfect for that. So, you know, and you didn't, and because they lasted so long, you did not really worry about crew compositions, you know? And so when we started sending people up to the Mir space station, and then ultimately to the ISS, the international space station, it was kind of funny because, you know, NASA had a very proud heritage. Russians had a very proud heritage. Russians could be totally snarky with us sometimes because they had actually been doing long-duration missions more than we had. And so there was just a lot of things that they taught us and we taught them a lot of things too. You know, it was a

two-way street. But really one of the things that we really began to learn is that the dynamics for crews that are actually in a can for six months, you know, you really need to think about that, particularly where there may be more than one language. So this idea of pairing people, and it's not just pairing because these are multicultural environments because, you know, when you talk in ISS, that's many nations doing it and they all get to, they have a say in doing it. Mars missions will be the exact same. I think those are all pieces. Then we've gotten really good about selecting people that actually work well in that environment. And it's a different environment, but we had to learn

what those compositions were. Now I'm going to tell you that we got really good for space stations. It's a six month mission. And we should not underestimate that when you look out the window and there's a wonderful cupola on space station where you're going to look down on the earth and people love to have coffee there, right? We should not underestimate the fact that when you're in the cupola having coffee, you are looking over this amazing planet that we all call home, and that is home. And we need to be mindful of the fact that that is a different mindset than when we go to Mars. And let me give. And we need to be mindful of the fact that that is a different mindset than when we go to Mars. And let me give you an example. When you go out on that 220 million miles out to Mars, there is going to be a point where the Earth is a tiny blue dot that you

have to look for in the sky. One might say a pale blue dot. A pale blue dot. Our second planet, which will be a tiny red dot that you have to look for in the sky, and the mission length is three years. It's not six months. And you're in a multicultural crew, probably. I think that what we need in terms of those people is going to be different than what we need in terms of people on the space station. And we're going to have to learn how to do that. The number of people we have may also have to be different than what we think. So three-person crews, we have seen that there will be either language or culture or, like, dynamic issues.

When we jumped to six-person crews as a CAPCOM, those literally almost all went away. It's just there was enough human beings there that someone was a little quirky, right? You could find others, and it just was enough human beings there that someone was a little quirky, right? You could find others, and it just was enough dynamics. I'm not sure we even really know the number for Mars, where you're in the vast sea of space, and you can't even call home. On Space Station, you can pick up the phone. You can do internet. You can do all those things. And even if you're having an issue with somebody on there, you can call someone you really love and care about on this

planet and vet. On Mars, that's not going to happen initially. You're talking, you know, if you say hi, how's it going? Like on a chat, their response, oh, I had a sucky day on this because the kids were sick and blah, blah, blah, right? That two-way exchange can take anywhere from 10 minutes to 44 minutes to complete. So how many people even that you need in the camp, what skills, in terms of interpersonal skills they need, that's going to be a whole area we're going to need to really think about. We've done this stuff before, not in space, but when Lewis and Clark went out, that was roughly about a three-year expedition. When the guys went down to South Pole initially and successfully, that was about three

years by the time they did a lot of these things. I mean, we've done this range of expedition. They weren't really multicultural, but we really have an experience base to really start piecing those pieces together. It would certainly help if we were going to Mars, if we had that marvelous, gigantic spaceship that we all saw in the movie The Martian, you know, with that big VASMIR rocket engine at the rear end and artificial gravity and just an amazing amount of wasted space. That isn't going to be what it looks like. But it's not going to be the extremely scaled-down thing that you see in some of the pictures. I'm not going to have to go to Mars just in the Orion capsule.

Right, right, because the truth is somewhere in between. And then that beautiful ship you saw on the Mars, which I love that movie, right? Yeah. That beautiful ship, that was like they'd already ended the process. They'd probably built it up over time, right? You know, we had to figure out that sweet spot where you get going sooner than later. We're hopefully using everything we learned at ISS and in our lunar goals too, and put all that to work sooner than later so we can buy that second bucket of risks down. Because I really spend a lot of time worrying about the aggregate risk. And if we don't ever get going with simpler than later,

and there's some really amazing technologies. So, for example, inflatables are emerging. So there are ways, relatively lightweight, inexpensive ways, of giving human beings the space they're probably going to need. But we need kids in school today. We need a lot of ideas from everybody really on how you do that in a way that actually gets the job done sooner than later. What do you think of the architecture that's currently being looked at to get us to the

moon? I heard just yesterday, I don't even know if this was an official announcement, that the contractor for the habitation module on what is we now call the gateway may have been chosen. This whole architecture, which at least at the moment is focused on the moon. And then more broadly, the question you had to know was coming moon versus Mars. Is it versus? They're not versus. To give you some examples, we know for Mars missions, we need to be able to aggregate the Mars transfer or the mothership in space. And we're not afraid of it because we've done aggregation in space for the

space station. We know how to do this thing. And you really are going to want something up in high Earth orbit or in cislunar space. And so the Gateway is a logical place there. So that is a key piece for starting to do the barge transfer vehicle. It teaches us how to operate outside the Van Allen belts, which is extremely important too. It also teaches us a number of other things. So, for example, suit designs. Our suits that we use today are zero-gravity suits. They weigh about 350 pounds. And zero gravity doesn't matter, right?

But they do matter because there's something called inertia, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when you actually start rotating it and it's 350 pounds of weight, it's hard to stop it. Mass doesn't go away in space. Mass doesn't go away. Then you talk of suits on the surface. There you have a gravity field. The moon is 1-6.

Mars is 1-3 of the Earth. But you do not want to be trying to walk around at 350 pounds. third of the Earth, but you do not want to be trying to walk around at 350 pounds. And so we need, the moon is a great place to start beating that out and actually really understanding how you do it on Mars. You probably need to be getting the weight of those suits down by a factor of seven. Wow. You know, down, say, 70, 80 pounds, so it's not that hard to do it. They also need to be robust.

So, for example, on Apollo 17, the lunar soil is basically like glass shards. Yeah. And on Apollo 17, they went out, if they had gone out for one more moonwalk, notice I didn't say spacewalk because it's a moonwalk, and there are really fundamental differences. On a moonwalk, they actually probably would have had a leak in the suit. No kidding. Because the glass shards were slicing into the suit.

I'd heard that there was noticeable wear and that they couldn't have spent much more time on the moon, but not that they were that close. They were close. And so the moon is a more extreme case in that case because Mars had weathering, which actually softens the thing. Yeah, thank goodness. Yeah. But Mars is somewhere between Earth and moon. And so if we can make suits work on the moon, we probably are well along the way of making them work on Mars. Rovers are the same way. Habitats are similar.

You know, so if we do it right, I think the trick and the balance is figuring out how much you do on the moon as you try to do things like explore resources versus when you actually start what I would call the horizon destination that we have been studying for 50 years. And I think if you do it right, they actually can be very, very complementary. But you have to really be looking and balancing those interests. Another thing they did well with the Martian, the suits that they wore on the surface, which looked pretty light. It looked like you were going to be able to get around on them. But then when it came time for the Martian to get picked up by the mothership, he put on that big bulky. It was a nice. They did a great job. And we actually work really closely with both the writer and the people producing them because, and so there were a few dramatic things like the dust storm would never be like that, right? Or

like launching with all that stuff. He knew. Yeah, he knew, he knew, he knew. He had to come up with something to get there. And yeah, I think he'd be the first to admit it. But the point is that it's an incredibly accurate depiction, if you will, of what the initial base on Mars will be like and some of the things we will have there. It is really – in fact, every time I go in and talk with kids, I ask them, how many of you see the Martian? And every one of them had their hands up. A pet peeve that I've never mentioned before and is not really relevant to what we're talking about. The thing that bothered me most always about the movie 2001, which I've always loved and saw it when it first came out, were the spacesuits. Because they had this weird tube or pipe running from, I think, the backpack to the

guy's helmet. And I'm thinking, that's ridiculous. Not only is it going to get caught on stuff, but computers that go nuts are going to rip it off your helmet and kill you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Made no sense. Anyway, enough of that. Back to the Mars architecture or the Moon architecture, the Artemis architecture. What do you think of the other components of it and how it's coming together? I mean, we're talking SLS, Orion. You've already mentioned the Gateway.

And then there's this question of building a lander. I mean, I told somebody, I don't know if it was Jim Bridenstine when he was on the show, your boss's boss. I said, well, we should just go get the old lunar module out of the Air and Space Museum and, you know, renovate it and send that down. But that's a huge step. The trick and the art, you have to grow into this, right? And you're going to make mistakes, too, but that's part of exploration, right? You know, the trick is actually figuring out, keeping an eye on what you need for Mars and making sure that informs what we do along the way. And not just at this gateway or on the surface of the moon, but actually at ISS and even in analogs,

so that we really are clicking these things down faster and sooner than later. There are enormous opportunities here in these efforts to really make this sort of unimaginable thing of humans actually becoming a multi-planetary species. I will tell you, having worked human spaceflight for years and years and having worked robotics in the Mars exploration program, I am personally convinced we are ready to really start going after this thing. We need to use everything, trick and trade we can, to actually make sure these other efforts are accelerating. You're pretty comfortable then with going to the moon first and that there's value in that. I'm absolutely comfortable.

Is it a requirement for Mars? I am not sure that I would say that it's a requirement. But I think that there are other reasons you go. And I think those are equally important reasons. go. And I think those are equally important reasons. And that in aggregate, I am absolutely comfortable in saying that we, if we do it right, we can leverage that experience in a massive way that is extremely enabling and making it possible to get to Mars sooner. Jim Bridenstine, the administrator, said on this show, and has said many times, make no mistake, we are going to Mars. And he was addressing this concern that the moon

would become a distraction. Does that concern you? It can be a distraction. But if you have a strategic approach to it, they can be very extremely synergistic. Problem is, is that this stuff is really complicated. And so if you get so tunneled into, say, looking at ISS or looking at the moon or looking at Mars, It goes both ways, right? You can miss those synergies. And we just need to basically be mindful of how we can do that. And we have to learn how to do that. Yeah.

All right. Eyes on the prize. I like to say to people, space is hard. Landing is harder. We have a lot left to learn. I just saw something. It came out of something you did not too long ago. Talking about even the last few meters as humans descend to Mars is a huge challenge and possibly a real danger.

And it's not that this is something for us to focus on a lot in this conversation, but just as an example of the challenges we have to overcome. Getting down there and throwing up a lot of rocks. The two that I personally worry about, so Mars has enough atmosphere that you have to deal with it because otherwise you can burn up. Yeah. And that's a bad day, right? Yet it's not enough that it actually really helps you slow down a lot, right? These landers that we're talking

about for human missions. So Curiosity is about a metric ton. It's basically an SUV. And I've heard people say it's about as big a thing as we can send to Mars with the technology that has been getting stuff to Mars. That's right. And there's pretty strong consensus that that's the case. So a human class lander is at least 20 times the size of Curiosity. It's basically 20 SUVs roped together. And so we know that chutes don't work for that. We know that sky crane ideas, which is totally radical for Curiosity, they're not going to work. And so really where the community is right now is that when we come in, we will break into the Martian system.

In other words, we'll go into orbit. And there are a lot of reasons why we do that. And we can choose our day of landing. And we'll choose it so that the atmosphere is pretty thick so we can make it slow us down. Just in case maybe a planet-wide dust storm started the day after launch. Exactly, exactly. Because this year, last year, we were caught surprised by a dust storm

that lasted seven, eight months and really made it very difficult. And you would not probably want to land in that. So we can pick our day when we actually do the entry. But then when you come in, you're still going really fast. You're probably going, I'm making up numbers, but they're not far off. You're probably going Mach 16, Mach 17, and you are dipping down right along the surface of the planet. So imagine looking out your window going Mach 17 right across the surface of the planet

for a long period of time. You know, one little degree error, you're talking smacking into the – you're going to make a real nice impact crater, right? And we will learn how to do that. I mean, but it is an incredibly challenging thing to do. And so there's a wonderful guy at JPL, Rob Manning, and he's – Oh, he's terrific. He's terrific. Yeah, yeah.

One of my favorite people. He's just amazing. wonderful guy at JPL, Rob Manning. Oh, he's terrific. He's terrific. One of my favorite people. He's just amazing. And he's really been thinking, and a lot of the people are doing this, about how to do this. And I think I am absolutely confident we'll figure that out.

But it is a pretty Yahoo ride, and it will be, you know, we're going to have to learn to really master extreme speeds close to the surface and have a navigation and guidance control that are just spot on if you're doing it. That's challenge number one. Challenge number two is exactly what you said, which is what we call the terminal phase where you actually touch down. And the real problem is this, is that when we take off on rockets on this planet, a good look at the pictures, they're just astounding.

There is flames, I mean, massive forces and heating that are going there. And we build concrete pads. I was just on pad 39. That's right, yeah, for that 39. Massive amount of concrete. And they're flowing tons of water because the acoustical energy is so bad. We don't have any of that infrastructure on the surface of Mars. And so when you get down to that, just on landing, in essence, the worst,

because you've got this big honking vehicle, and it's got to build up speed. And so those jets are just pouring energy out of them all over the place. And that energy is going places. And we know that rocks can be thrown at three times the speed of a bullet. So if you have a multi-billion dollar habitation module or a laboratory, or you've got your drills nearby pulling up water out of the Martian ice or whatever. It doesn't take many of those rocks before they're toast. And so learning to manage that is going to be a really fascinating problem. And what's really cool is that we know, wherever human beings you meet, everything that every human being is doing.

And I love the fact that civil engineering is now becoming a major thing that we're probably going to need on our second planet. We should have all known that. But now you see the community rapidly beginning, oh, wow, maybe we need to do that. We do roads or two, so maybe we need roads. I'm not being critical because this is actually just part of the exploration process where you start to realize you need these things, like the psychiatrists probably. It's just exciting to think that we're at the stage where you have to start considering simple engineering. That's right.

We're collectively understanding the phasing, which is that next step in terms of making this possible. Well, we could send robots and they could do institute resources and make a big concrete pad. That's right. There's some really cool ideas. There's an idea that you understand

the dirt or regolith, as we call it, and then you scoop it up and use 3D printing to actually make structures. Or maybe the first crews that go to Mars will be in orbit, and they will actually be operating rovers on the ground to clear launch pads with essentially a dozer blade. With no delay. With no delay. Very little delay between them and the robots doing the work. That's right. This is the kind of stuff that you love to talk about, obviously,

but you also get to talk about as part of this group that you co-lead, the Mars Human Landing Sites Study. And you do these periodic telecons that are a joy. I love to join those. They're such fun to listen to and learn from. And this is really what that study is all about, right? To consider these challenges. I do co-lead it. And Jim Green ran planetary science. Now he's the chief scientist. Real visionary. And I was clueless when he asked me to do this. But he understood, and I later came to realize was that by understanding what you need in terms of the base,

220 million miles from here, it backward drives our understanding of everything else you need. I was really clueless about it, but I will tell you, when we did the workshop, we had 400 people support that. They literally were from all over this planet. And the energy and the ideas, that's why I use the term family, because they actually feel like family. And the commitment to the future, you just start seeing these ideas starting to emerge about how you really go do this. And I personally feel like I was really lucky to actually be involved with this.

But this goes back to your job, right? Because your job, in large part, is to bring people from all these different divisions and disciplines together. Well, it's many of ours. But, yes, that is how it's going to happen, by getting everyone thinking about how you actually start piecing. So, for example, civil engineering has become a thing. You know, how you manage these plumes, all these things. We're learning and piecing all those pieces together. You know, how you manage these plumes, all these things.

We're learning and piecing all those pieces together. Have these discussions that you've had as part of this landing site survey, which has been involved in deciding where we're going to send people as well, has it added to your concern, your intimidation, or has it made you more hopeful and excited about getting there? Oh, it's absolutely convinced me it's doable. Yeah, that's kind of me. It's doable. Yeah, that's kind of what I expected to hear. But let me, Matt, just amplify that a little. Sure. So when I first started, maybe I didn't really even have that understanding. But I will tell you, that's that belief issue, right? Once you actually start getting past the, it's too hard,

then you start piecing it in. That's actually what's happening now with so many people that are actually starting to piece it together. When you see that occur and having watched this occur in the early days of shuttle and watch it in the early days of station, early days of these other programs, or whether it be Orion or SLS, and even having some awareness of what it was done when we first started seeing astronauts in the Mir program, right? Mir station. Yeah. That tells you that actually that's when it starts to really happen. And I'm seeing that personally on for Mars. And Michelle and I were talking about this. Michelle, who's sitting here with us. Mars person.

Thanks. You know, it's an exciting thing when you start seeing this start to happen. It's messy. Yeah. But you know what? Cool things often are messy. Interesting thing that happened at a breakout session, a smaller group at the last Humans to Mars Summit that you were also at, of course. And it was looking at Mars habitations. And if I remember correctly, there was one little unit that was like the

hydroponic unit where people were growing their own food. And there happened to be a botanist in the audience who said, hey, you really need to bring somebody like me in on this because, you know, what you're doing right there, that's not going to work. You need to do it this way. And the people said, yes, you're right. You should, you or people like you ought to be part of this. So I love that question. So it's that phasing thing, right? I'm absolutely convinced agriculture is going to be there. You're going to need botanists, you know, people who can actually understand. There's a guy at JPL I love. His name is Rich Zierich.

He has this wonderful phrase. You know, Rich goes, use Mars as it is, not as you want it to be. And I love that expression because you're going to need people who have all the experience of this planet in this certain discipline areas who can then have the creativity to actually adapt them to Mars as it is, not as we want it to be, and then make it so that we're successful there. And so you're going to need botanists at some point. I love thinking about what the composition of those initial crews are going to be. For space station missions, when we send someone up there, you can pre-screen somebody for a six-month mission to make sure they're probably not going to have an appendicitis, right? But on a three-year mission, even a healthy human being can have degenerations in their body that actually send them into an acute problem. It could even just

be a tooth problem. Exactly. I had a woman on the show who has written a paper about this and has studied how we're going to handle somebody who gets a cavity. That's right. That's a big deal. You know, and so the range of just in one area of medical things that you really have to worry about, particularly the time delays of communicating back with her, is going to be much higher. And so you're going to want a doctor on that crew and you're probably you may even want to or you're gonna have someone else who's trained who can actually do that fill in and do that thing because that doctor could get sick right you've seen the move great movie yeah master and commander yeah yeah where

the character in the film that's right is shot it has to remove the bullet from his own abdomen right so I mean you start to get a sense so you you're gonna want people who actually for fun on the weekends go work on their cars, you know, because those are the people that actually fix things when it's really bad. Yeah. And they like machines that much. You had better send an astrobiologist to Mars because the first one we go should be, you know, when we sent Jack Schmidt on Apollo 17, he was the only geologist that went.

If you're going that far to look for life, you had better send an expert in that thing. But those are only three-ish of the people that are there. And so what are those other compositions? That's a totally cool problem that we are going to need a lot of smart people helping us figure it out. Yeah, well, you know, the Martian was a botanist. That's right. But he was a pretty resourceful guy. Let's talk about the commercial side and the role that it's going to play.

And maybe even a central role, if Elon Musk is to be believed, what would it mean if they really could pull this off, and that remains to be seen, if SpaceX could get humans to Mars perhaps before anybody else? Initial response is more power to them. This is not about NASA going or just the United States going. This is about humans going. And so if they can figure out a radically innovative way to do that, more power to them. And they've certainly come up with some significant innovations. And it's not just SpaceX because it's Blue Origin, it's Virgin Galactic. It's all of these commercial entities that are really doing innovative new stuff, which is

really significantly increasing our breadth of capabilities in space in general. And actually, I would say as a Martian, enabling a human exploration of Mars in ways maybe some of us don't even realize. But I think the reality is going to be more nuanced. I think there will be partnering that gets done between space agencies, NASA being right in the forefront, and these commercial entities and maybe even academic entities, right? I personally believe that Mars is not going to be done like Apollo, which was very top-down.

I actually think it's more distributed, more like ISS, maybe even more distributed where you've got all these other players that were trying to go out there and they're working together collaboratively and they have real responsibilities that are enabling this thing. And so you can sort of envision the commercials doing really significant things out there once they get their footings, if you will, in terms of being comfortable there. And we should welcome that and really make, because the magic of what we can do collectively is going to be much higher than any one entity trying to do it by itself. So the ability of companies like Blue Origin, like SpaceX, with their new vehicles that

are coming online to be able to support the work that NASA is doing. vehicles that are coming online to be able to support the work that NASA is doing. And, you know, Elon always gives credit to NASA for enabling them to accomplish what they have accomplished. You definitely see a role for that. Yeah. And I think you're seeing it in ISS and what we're beginning to see in the lunar activities where NASA kind of function, at least for U.S. industry, is functioning as an anchor tenant. Yeah. And then they get their sea legs or space legs, if you will. And then they go on and start doing other things as they leverage. And I personally see that moving right on out to Mars. I think it's that belief issue a little bit, the idea of an American corporation or corporations, plural, hopefully,

operating all the way out at Mars separately. It seems a little weird, but you know what? Not to me. Yeah, going to Mars is not, you know, once you get past that belief thing, that's just part of the human realm. You know, we're not a planetary species at that point. We're a solar system species. I'm so proud to have come up with this line on the spur of the moment.

And I don't know if you were in the room. We were on stage last session of the Humans to Mars Summit. I apologize, listeners, you were in the room. We were on stage last session of the Humans to Mars Summit. I apologize, listeners. You've heard this before. But people like to talk about putting boots on Mars. And I said, I don't just want boots on Mars. I want a shoe store. Do you see humans living and thriving on Mars someday?

Not just visiting and spending some period of time doing research. Absolutely. So the Apollo program was amazing, but we went to six different sites and we never really set up infrastructure, which is probably one of the reasons why it didn't continue. ISS has taught us a different model, right? You basically have a base, that's what ISS is, and you aggregate stuff. And really there's a reason why you do it that way,

because it's like what we did in Antarctica. They pushed to McMurdo first and then they built up supplies of fuel. You live and die by fuel in Antarctica, right? Because that's heat and it keeps all the machines running. And they built supplies, spare parts, all that kind of stuff. And so by having a base location, you actually buy yourself and the people who are dependent or whose lives are dependent on it and the people who are dependent, or whose lives are dependent on it, and the program, right? You buy options when the bad days happen. You know, I personally started working at the Johnson Space Center two weeks before

Challenger. I was in, I was a newbie instructor, very excited to go up to the astronaut floor. And so actually the first day I went up to the astronaut floor was the, and then my senior instructor goes, well, come out, let's watch the launch from here. I will tell you, everyone has their story, but I will tell you my story is hearing the screams of the people who were the support staff for that crew, who they were like family with, because everyone on that floor knew what had happened. From almost day one, I was ingrained in my head that bad days happen. Day one, I was ingrained in my head that bad days happen.

So when I think about Martian exploration, I think about having a base there that is in a really cool spot for science that we will then, once we get set up and operating there, and hopefully it's not just the United States, it's a lot of countries working together so that you can make it sustainable, that we can then really start to understand our second planet well and really do it properly in a way that will lead to generations of knowledge that we can't even begin to imagine right now that ultimately teaches us more about what we're doing here on this amazing planet. And I just think that that's really where you want to go. And picking that base is really key.

I love going to Jamestown in Virginia, which is where I'm from, because basically it was a crappy site location, right? It was right on the river. If you go there today, hopefully your viewers have had a chance to go there because it's basically an archaeological dig because it probably flooded like anything, right? It took them probably 70 or 80 years before they realized, oh, Williamsburg's up a little higher. Maybe we ought to go there. Williamsburg still exists. And so picking a spot where you're going to do that initial exploration and that you're going to branch out from on Mars is really key. But really, if you're going to go that far and go to all the effort of building those relationships with other

countries and commercial entities, we're crazy not to make it a permanent thing. The trick is to do it economically and then to step our way in a way that is sustainable and not absurdly expensive. You've been around long enough to see so much happen, some bad, most of it very, very good. Is it an ongoing source of inspiration for you? Oh, absolutely. I mean, I go back to the 7th and 8th graders that I was talking with this week. Their eyes light up because these challenges don't have answers yet.

How you keep people productive and happy when they are so far from the people they love, productive and happy when they are so far from the people they love, you know, 150 million miles away, you know, outbound to Mars and, you know, and how you, you know, what kind of science do we do when we're in a region of space humans have never been in? I mean, that's just a tiny sampling of the questions. But that jazz is kids. I mean, that's really what gives me extreme optimism about our capacity, you know, to really go nail these things and do that. And, yeah, there will be problems along the way. But I have extreme confidence based off seeing these kids come along and leveraging everything we've learned to date. We've been in space for over 50 years.

We've actually been going to Mars for over 50 years with our robotic mission. Yeah, that's absolutely right. When you go into Atlanta, Hartsfield, you know, nowadays, I am always astounded by the technology that's represented by pulling all those planes. We think of it as routine. Orberl and Wilbur Wright did not even have a clue as to what that. And really, those time spans are not dissimilar. No. You know, so when you start taking all this knowledge, all this energy of students that are out there today, and all these incredible capabilities, and for example, you know,

what you all just did, you actually have to be careful because you can get stuck in the past in terms of what you think is possible. And I would argue that maybe Mars is a little more achievable than maybe sometimes we think it might be. Keep looking forward. I'm going to go back to that slogan that you mentioned, frontiers shatter complacency. It's important. It is. And I absolutely believe that every human being has a massive capacity that is uniquely theirs. And sometimes we all forget

that our uniqueness is actually what, if we can figure out what it is that gives us those gifts, we can do that. And frontiers basically do not allow you to become complacent about our potential. And they teach us that we're interdependent. The learning when you can't be complacent, and the self-learning is amazing. And so I just am really excited that the human species is now, we are literally on the step of becoming multi-planetary species. And I think we have no clue as to what that really means in terms of our potential for self-growth. I hope that both of us are around to see a lot more of it happen, Rick.

I'm actually pretty optimistic we will be, because I think you're starting to see some amazing things happening. Great talking to you again, Rick. Thank you very much. I'll see you on Mars. Okay, cool. It's time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. Here is the chief scientist of the Planetary Society, also the program manager for LightSail 2, still circling over our heads, Bruce Betts. Welcome back. Thank you. Good to be back, Matt. Looking at Jupiter last night, I bet you're going to mention it in a moment here. It looked great still, but how's LightSail 2 doing? I have not seen that. It's harder to see than Jupiter. Doing pretty well.

Had some communications issues the last few days, which were partly due to ground stations. We have a few ground stations, but we had broken parts at two of the main ones, Purdue and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. But they are now replacing the parts. And we had a really good communications evening last night. So we're back in business. Meanwhile, it's been solar sailing and raising its apogee, its higher point in the orbit more and more,

so we've added about more than 6.5 kilometers to the high point in the orbit from solar sailing. That is excellent. That's pretty substantial. I bet people miss having Radio Shack around. Probably. Jupiter and what else? Saturn and Antares. So I've mentioned them before, but they're just making quite the lovely scene soon after sunset, low over in the southwest and south. You've got Jupiter, the brightest object, brighter than any star. As Matt said, it looks cool. And to its lower right is Antares, the dimmer but reddish, brightest red star in Scorpius.

And to the upper left, farther away, is Saturn, looking yellowish. And those are still your best bets for fun. You can also use Antares to try to trace out Scorpius, which kind of looks like a scorpion, or at least you can imagine it. Red enteres is sometimes called the beating heart of the scorpion. Your imagination is obviously better than mine. Well, that's definitely true. All right. We move on to this week in space history.

1976. We'll come back to this in a little bit, but Luna 24 returned the last samples from the moon to the earth this week in 1976. It was a big week for Voyager 2, 1981, passed by Saturn. And 30 years ago, 1989, did the first and only visit to Neptune and friends. I've said it before recently, got to get Ed Stone back on the show and he can update us on those amazing interstellar spacecraft. Still going, still working. We'll come back to Voyager 2 in just a moment when we go to random space.

So Voyager 2, when 30 years ago it passed by Neptune, it passed about almost 5,000 kilometers or about 3,000 miles above Neptune's North Pole. This was its closest approach to any planet. It happened 12 years after it left Earth. after it left Earth. So about, you know, the distance across the continental United States away from the North Pole and Neptune before it headed off for interstellar kind of space. Got to get out there again someday and Uranus too. We'll send you, Matt. I'm ready. I know you are. We move on to the trivia contest. So I asked you, after Luna 24 in 1976,

what was the next successful soft lander on the moon? How'd we do, Matt? The shock here for many, many listeners who absolutely registered that surprise is that it took so long. It did indeed. Our winner, as chosen by random.org. Arnold Durink in Belgium, he said it was only in 2013 that the goddess of the moon, Chang'e 3, soft landed from China, of course. He says, if you ask me, the time gap between Lunar 24 and Chang'e 3 is way too big, which is what we heard from everybody. Fortunately, there's more stuff there and going there. So we don't have to wait 37 years for the next one. Arnold, congratulations. I believe he's a first-time winner.

He's been listening for a while. He is going to get a priceless Planetary Society kick asteroid rubber asteroid, a 200-point itelescope.net astronomy account, and the book that we talked about a couple of weeks ago, Oklahomans in Space, Chronicles of the Amazing Contributions of Oklahomans in the Aerospace Industry by our guest when we did our show at Science Museum Oklahoma, Bill Moore, one of our guests there. It really is. It's a fascinating book. He did a great job putting it together. A simple greeting from Darren Ritchie in Renton, Washington. Ni hao, Yulang, which as far as I know, means hello, good moon. Perry Metzger in New York, New York. Although landings

on the moon were infrequent, landings on rubber asteroids are even rarer. To my knowledge, no robotic mission has ever landed on one successfully. No robotic mission, but they have visited people's heads. I couldn't resist throwing that in, just like people throw those rubber asteroids at people's heads. Throw those rubber asteroids at people's heads. We got this wonderful contribution from Curtis Franks in Willoughby, Ohio. It is a sonnet, a sonnet dedicated to these spacecraft that visit the surface of our satellite. I'm sorry that I don't have time to read the entire sonnet.

I'm just going to read the last two stanzas. But lo, in Middle Kingdom times at hand, that our adventurous spirit may not fade to soft pond familiar and foreign land. Down, sweet Chang'e 3 and her rabbit Jade. Wow. Yeah. rabbit Jade. Wow. Yeah. And with that,

we are ready to move on to a brand new contest with a brand new prize. We're going to stick with lunar exploration. What was the first spacecraft to take a picture of the earth from the vicinity of the moon? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. Excellent question. Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. Excellent question. Something that continues. You have until the 28th of August at 8 a.m. Pacific time to get us the answer to this one. And you'll win yourself a Planetary Society rubber asteroid, a 200-point itelescope.net account,

Rubber Asteroid, a 200-point itelescope.net account, worldwide nonprofit network of telescopes that you can operate remotely and take a look at things like the moon. And, and this is pretty special, a brand new book by a guy named Bruce Betts. Who? Super Cool Space Facts, a fun, fact-filled space book for kids. And I guess you've targeted four to eight-year-olds with this? Yeah, it's targeting four to eight-year-olds, but let's be real. If you love random space facts, you might love this book, whether you're four to eight or 40 to 80 or above. I did. I've gone through it.

above. I did. I've gone through it. Even though it's not out, it's not going to be available either as an e-book or in paperback until September 3rd. So when we award this, it will actually be available. But you can read about it. It's in all the usual places like Amazon. I got an early version because I know people. It's delightful. It's lovely. It's well-designed, just like your last one. And it's great fun. The jokes are awful, which is perfect for the age range that you're shooting for. Hey, I wrote most of the hosts. I could tell. No, it's really fun. I am looking forward to sharing it with my grandson, who's maybe, he's a year or two young for your target age range. But I think very soon, he's very smart. He's going to be ready for this. Hey, Matt, what do you get when you make a sandwich out of graham cracker, marshmallow,

and planet? I don't know what. Smars. Smars. See? They're brilliant. I was trying to make Moon Pie work, but no. All right. So anyway, super cool space facts. You'll get a copy if you are the winner of this latest contest. And you can choose to have it signed or not, whichever. By you or by someone else? Oh, well, I can only control that I would sign it. I didn't know people actually wanted their book to file. It's optional. I'd go for it. Why not?

Let's wrap this up. All right, everybody, go out there, look up the night sky, and think about what your favorite power tool to hear all day in the background while you're working would be. Thank you, and good night. They're building a medical school right across the street from the Planetary Society and that might come in handy someday he's Bruce Betts the chief scientist

of the Planetary Society who joins us every week here for What's Up Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California and is made possible by its science factual members Mary Liz Bender has been our

associate producer for the last couple of years. She is moving on now to do some really, really great things with her life and associates, and I wish her well, and I am eternally grateful. Sure look forward to other opportunities to work with her. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which was arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. I'm Matt Kaplan. Ad Astra, Mary Liz.