Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Neil deGrasse Tyson on the Future of Space Exploration

Episode Date: March 21, 2005

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Transcription by CastingWords that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan. A special welcome this week to our new listeners on XM Public Radio, Channel 133. We hope you'll join us every week as we explore the cosmos. And who better to explore it with than the director of the Hayden Planetarium and host of the Nova miniseries, Origins. Neil deGrasse Tyson will be with us in just a couple of minutes. Later, we'll join Bruce Betts for a what's-up look at the sky and his new space trivia contest.

We'll get our voyage underway with these headlines from around the galaxy. Flight Commander Eileen Collins and her crew were at NASA's Kennedy Space Center last week, familiarizing themselves with equipment they'll use when Space Shuttle Discovery lifts off on its return-to-flight mission. The late May or early June launch will be the first since the Columbia accident. Discovery will test new safety systems and deliver supplies to the International Space Station. Back in Houston, hundreds of scientists were gathering to learn what the Huygens probe is telling us about Saturn's moon Titan. They heard a hair-raising tale about the little spacecraft's bumpy ride down to the surface, completed as it sent back data that has both delighted and mystified its masters back on Earth.

You can read the full story and see some of the titanic images at planetary.org. Looking past our own neighborhood, expect news from NASA this week about the search for extrasolar planets. The Spitzer Space Telescope has apparently made some exciting discoveries about these worlds circling other stars. We'll have details for you on next week's show. I'll be back with Neil Tyson right after Emily checks out a moon rock or two. And I do mean checks out. Back in a minute. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, What are the rules for handling moon rocks? Between 1969 and 1972,

six Apollo missions brought back a third of a ton of rocks, core samples, pebbles, sand, and dust from the lunar surface. On Earth, these specimens have been processed into nearly 100,000 individually catalogued samples, which NASA's Johnson Space Center curates as an international scientific resource. Lunar materials that are considered pristine have never left NASA custody. Researchers who want to study pristine material must come to Johnson Space Center,

where the samples are kept inside stainless steel glove cabinets in an atmosphere of pure nitrogen gas. The pristine samples are always separated from human hands by three layers of gloves. Some research requires that small amounts of the lunar samples be destroyed. For instance, they may be pulverized or melted for chemical analysis. In order to request samples for such destructive analysis, scientists must first prove that the analysis is worthwhile by doing a test run of all of their experiments on simulated lunar rocks or soils. But did you know that not all of the Apollo samples are slated for researchers?

Stay tuned to Planetary Radio to find out more. Under the direction of Neil deGrasse Tyson, the Rose Center for Earth and Space, featuring the Hayden Planetarium, has become a New York City must-see. Last fall, Tyson made some must-see TV when he hosted a Nova miniseries on PBS. The Bronx-born astrophysicist also served on presidential commissions that considered space exploration and the future of the aerospace industry. So when he talks about the vision for Moon, Mars, and beyond, it's worth listening.

That's just what we did on a recent morning. Neil, the last time we talked, we were in your office at your magnificent Star Palace there in New York City, and it was just before Origins, your miniseries, Nova miniseries, was about to air. Been a little while since then. What was the reaction? Oh, it's been wonderful on all fronts. The public, my email inbox was overflowed. Also, some very, very complimentary remarks from my colleagues.

And I think what perhaps triggered that is the fact that I rather purposefully did not cast myself as the single deliverer of all of this information. I shared that stage with the people who actually did the work. There are many scientists from all different disciplines, chemists, biologists, geologists, all sort of telling us what was on the frontier of cosmic origins as seen through their own lens. Is it going to air again or how can somebody who did miss it when it aired last fall on PBS, how can they catch it? Well, you can now buy it. That's the simplest thing to do. I love telling people the whole first season is now available on DVD. But it is PBS, and they re-air things.

And the re-airing schedule is a mystery to many of us, but it should start showing up again now, six months later. You were nothing if not busy. This was just one of many things that you've got going on. We want to talk to begin with about your involvement almost on the political front dealing with the topic of space exploration. Of course, you recently became the chairman of the board for the Planetary Society. As such, not that you were kept from having opinions prior to that, but now, to a degree, also speak for the society. And I read just recently on the website your reaction to the naming by the Bush administration of their candidate, the person that they would like to see become the NASA administrator.

Yeah, Mike Griffin. Well, let's back up for a moment. As many of your listeners may know, the announcement of the Vision for Space Exploration is a rather multidimensional, ambitious project which seeks to combine robotic exploration with human exploration, targeting not a single place as a destination as we did in the Apollo era. Because remember back then, Kennedy said, let's go to the moon. And then we got to the moon. And then you look around

and say, well, what next? Well, there was no plan to do anything but to walk on the moon. And so we don't want to make that mistake again. So this vision includes going back to the moon, onto Mars, asteroids, space-based observatories, and it's a very rich, diverse portfolio. The catchphrase being the moon, Mars, and beyond. The and beyond part is especially critical here. Oh, by the way, the official title of the commission on which I served was the Commission for the Implementation of the United States Space Exploration Policy. And nobody wanted to say that every time they were asked. So we shortened it to Moon, Mars, and Beyond. So now, so given that portfolio ideas, what you want is a leader of NASA who at least has walked in the shoes of each of these

branches of endeavors. And so it turns out Mike Griffin, who was just proposed by the president to head NASA, by the way, any head of NASA has to be approved by Congress. So this is a proposed candidate. He's got all the background, you know, the engineering background, the physics background. He's on, he works, he's head of the Applied Physics Lab on the campus of Johns Hopkins University. So he's sensitive to academic needs. This would be the whole science dimension of this vision. He used to work for NASA. He's got all of these aspects all rolled up into one candidate.

And how could you say no to that? So, in fact, the Planetary Society, the executive board of the Planetary Society drafted a letter, not only initially recommending him to the president, but applauding that decision when it finally came to pass. And that contained my signature as the new chair of the board. And I guess he also had some more direct involvement with the Planetary Society when he co-led a study recently with Owen Garriott, the astronaut. Yeah, that's correct.

We commissioned a study to evaluate a broad discussion of vehicles, manned exploration, what kinds of barriers must be overcome to make that happen, what is the politics, the engineering, the science, how that all comes together? And that study has been widely circulated and reported upon. And so that, in a way, kind of added some feathers in the cap of what would make him an ideal candidate for this job. Let's turn back to your experience. You've actually served on a couple of commissions recently, the one that you mentioned, Moon, Mars, and Beyond.

But what, a couple of years ago, a little bit more than that, you were part of one that completed a report on the future of the U.S. aerospace industry. How do those two articulate? So you've got the whole biography there, huh? We do our homework. Yeah, I mean, in that I still did have a day job. My first presidential appointment was, in fact, to serve on this other commission, the Commission on the Health of the United States Aerospace Industry, which had been on hard times for many years. One could say it's still on hard times.

They'd lost a half a million jobs in the past 15 years. And this erosion of leadership concerned the administration and Congress greatly. And so this commission of 12 was appointed, I was among them, to study the world climate in which aerospace is functioning and try to understand what was accounting for that erosion and to propose what could help it in the future. And there was a space dimension of that because space is half of the word aerospace. And that's the part to which I materially contributed. Space is half of the word aerospace, and that's the part to which I materially contributed. The commission had other people who represented aviation and the airplane universe, but the cosmic universe, that's what I brought to the table. And we had a final report recommending to Congress a reinvestment in our space efforts, knowing that that stokes the pipeline of students who then might have ambitions to become airspace engineers or

astronauts and the like. Without a place to land, it doesn't matter how good your teachers are. If the kid doesn't have a place to dream about where they might live and occupy, what space they might occupy, it's all for naught, as far as I can tell. We're going to come back to talking about kids when we get back from a break. Because of an article that appeared recently in the L.A. Times, actually a commentary, which I wanted to give you a chance to comment on. But our guest this week on Planetary Radio is Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson.

He is the director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City and the host of the NOVA miniseries, Origins. He is also the author of several books, including his memoir, The Sky is Not the Limit, Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist. We'll be back with Neil right after this. This is Buzz Aldrin. When I walked on the moon, I knew it was just the beginning of humankind's great adventure in the solar system.

That's why I'm a member of the Planetary Society, the world's largest space interest group. The Planetary Society is helping to explore Mars. We're tracking near-Earth asteroids and comets. We sponsor the search for life on other worlds, and we're building the first-ever solar sail. You can learn about these adventures and exciting new discoveries from space exploration in the Planetary Report. The Planetary Report is the Society's full-color magazine. It's just one of many member benefits.

You can learn more by calling 1-877-PLANETS. That's toll-free, 1-877-752-6387. And you can catch up on space exploration news and developments at our exciting and informative website, PlanetarySociety.org. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Planetary Radio is back with our special guest this week, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, the director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, also the host of the Origins miniseries on Nova.

For you PBS fans, you probably are well aware of it and had a good time watching it, and is also the recently appointed chairman of the Planetary Society. Neil, you were going to add something about that study that was led by Mike Griffin and Owen Garriott? Yeah, that's right. I neglected to mention in the opening remarks that the title of their study was Extending Human Presence into the Solar System. It's an analysis of what that requires, the challenges and the benefits of it. That, in fact, if you're interested in that study, you can read it on planetary.org, the webpages of the Planetary Society.

of the Planetary Society. Before we went to the break, you were starting to talk about the young people of America and giving them cause for inspiration so that both the aerospace industry and space exploration will have the human resources that this country will need to keep us in the forefront. I want to go to this commentary that was in the L.A. Times a couple of weeks ago by a science writer, actually, Margaret Wertheim, who wrote a piece called Let's Shoot for Quality Teachers, Not for Mars. And if I captured it correctly, the gist of her thesis is that why do we need to go to Mars to inspire young people? Let's take the money it would cost, admittedly quite a bit, to get to the red planet and spend it on better science teachers.

You know, it sounds all noble when you, at first pass, you say, of course, we need better teachers. Let's go ahead and invest in that. But then she says, well, let's take it away from some of the most powerful dream states that ever was put forth by this nation, the enterprise of space exploration. And that's just being short-sighted about how this works. Yes, you can have the best teachers you can ever drum up, pay them all the money you want,

but if you're going to stoke a pipeline of students to come out at the other end wanting to be aerospace engineers, scientists of any ilk, you need a place for them to land. And if you don't provide a place for them to land, you're not going to attract the numbers you need to feed that industry. And it's that simple. By the way, if all you can say is, well, become an aerospace engineer so that you can design an airplane 20% more fuel efficient than the one your parents flew, you're not going to get them. But if you say, become an aerospace engineer or a scientist so that you can design the airfoil that will fly in the rarefied atmospheres of Mars, then you've got them hooked. You've got the good teacher and you've got a place for the student to land. You need both. hooked. You've got the good teacher and you've got a place for the student to land. You need both. And to implicate the investments in the space program as a place to draw the money from,

given how much else is getting spent in this country, I find to be not only short-sighted, but irresponsible. So it's not necessarily an either or, you can have good science teachers or you can go to Mars. It's both. It can't be either or. It has to be both. So to pit one against the other is missing the entire point of why we do what we do. You know, what good are science teachers if there's not a job at the other end for them to occupy? Our technological advantage that we have taken for granted post-Second World War is eroding because we've just been sort of riding on our laurels, riding on the investments made by generations before us in our science and technology infrastructures. The rest of the world is catching up and passing us by, and we're watching jobs go overseas. You know,

the issue isn't simply that jobs went overseas. No one complained that jobs were overseas making Nike shoes. They might have complained about the working conditions, but they didn't say, we want those jobs back here. Nobody complained because it was so low level. It didn't affect our own vision of ourselves here, but now blue collar jobs, engineering jobs, higher paying jobs are going overseas because everybody else is doing what we're doing now. And that's just the beginning. And without any kind of measured investment with foresight and science and technological infrastructure, that'll just continue. The rest of the world will leave us behind.

Let's come back to the path laid out by your commission and the Bush administration, Moon, Mars, and beyond, which is certainly not without controversy. And I wonder if a piece of this is the old robots versus humans argument. Yeah, you know, if you ask a scientist wearing a pure science hat, And I wonder if a piece of this is the old robots versus humans argument. Yeah. You know, if you ask a scientist wearing a pure science hat, say, what should we do in space? They'll say, don't ever send people. It costs too much for the return on that investment.

Now, of course, the hidden story there is that the return is defined to be a scientific return when that statement gets made. And that's clearly a true statement. However, the exploration of space has always been this sort of tandem activity between humans and robots. The humans carry, if you will, the soul of exploration, the vicarious soul that we give to astronauts, because we want to really do it ourselves. But now they do it, and they come back and tell the stories. Robots don't tell stories. Nobody gives ticker tape parades for robots. Nobody names high schools and domain schools after robots.

So there's something really crucial about the human dimension that is a greater mirror of the reality of discovery than a simple scientific result. So what you do is you combine both of them, and you satisfy all the needs of what it is to be human. This is a message that I've got to keep banging over the head of my colleagues, and they're converting slowly, but it's a big effort. It sounds like the argument is much like the one you were making a couple of minutes ago regarding science teachers and Mars.

It's not a question of either this or that. That's right. And, in fact, many of my colleagues, I and my colleagues, were directly exposed to the Apollo program. And if you ask my colleagues today, should we send humans into space, they'll say, no, only send robots. Or I say, well, how did you get interested in space? They'll say the man program of the 1960s. So that's not fair to deny this whole aspect of discovery from the next generation, even though we all enjoyed that back in the 60s. We're just about out of time, but I want to ask you what we have to look forward to in space exploration, but also look forward to from Neil Tyson.

The Vision has a lot of aspects to it. One of them is a vehicle that will not only get us to Earth orbit, which is where we've been going for the past 30 years, driving around the block. We want to go out of Earth orbit, and the crew exploration vehicle is the first step in this effort to take humans beyond low Earth orbit back out into real space, where you're actually headed somewhere. By the way, in our commission report, we gave out a strong shout-out to entrepreneurs of small companies or just no companies at all, people who just have great ideas that could revolutionize how we not only get to space but how we live and work in space going forward. People like Bert Rutan. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I'd like

to see how we think of NASA, not simply as this government agency with tax money feeding it, but as an enterprise that is fully sewn together with the corporate entrepreneurship that has made this country great. It is this buoyant force that will keep the vision alive well into the future. Without it, I actually have little hope that it would survive. your home site as well. People can learn much more about your work there at the Hayden Planetarium and everything else that you have been up to. I do have one other question I've got to ask. When you were voted sexiest astrophysicist alive by People magazine in 2000, who was your competition? I don't know who my competition was. You know, first consider the category. You know, it wasn't sexiest action star. It wasn't sexiest model.

It was sexiest astrophysicist. So they haven't repeated the category. I think they were just having fun that year. But it's an interestingly dubious but fun honor. And I don't know if I'll ever live it down. Neil deGrasse Tyson. I always wanted to be respected for my mind. Well, it's not too late. He's the director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City.

He was the host of the Nova miniseries Origins, and he is now the chairman of the board for the Planetary Society. I think he's earned that respect. Neil deGrasse Tyson. He also has a couple of books on the market at the moment. One of them is his memoir, The Sky is Not the Limit, Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist. And I guess you also have the companion book for the Origin series, 14 Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution, which you co-wrote with Donald Goldsmith. Thank you.

I want to count on having you back on the show at least another few more times in the future. This is an easy date for me, so anytime I'm ready for you. Well, thanks also for being our first guest as we take to the air on XM Public Radio. We'll be back with Bruce Betts. And what's up right after this return visit from Emily. I'm Emily Lakdawalla, back with Q&A. The Apollo lunar samples are a precious international resource, but they are not just for scientific researchers.

The Johnson Space Center keeps sets of samples that are no longer considered pristine for public use. For instance, large samples in glass cases are available for loan to museums. In fact, anybody with good intentions can get a hold of lunar samples, at least briefly. For instance, large samples in glass cases are available for loan to museums. In fact, anybody with good intentions can get a hold of lunar samples, at least briefly. Want to see your kids handle pieces of the moon? Any school teacher who participates in a special training program can ask to borrow samples of lunar rocks and soils embedded in acrylic disks, which can be passed around among school kids. The Apollo samples are like data from every space mission.

They belong to everybody. Got a question about the universe? Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org. And now here's Matt with more Planetary Radio. Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. We are joined, as always, by Dr. Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. Bruce, this is a great location we found for Planetary Radio.

It really is. We're on location today doing some serious planetary activities at Caltech, the California Institute of Technology. We're in a giant test chamber, and we're next to a spacecraft right now. No, he's lying. We're actually, well, we are at Caltech. Tell him where we really are. We're at the Braun Athletic Facility. He's inside a racquetball court because we think it's fun. And isn't that the coolest thing? Brains at Caltech

and Braun, the athletic facility. I love it. Well, with all these new XM listeners who are now trying to figure out what the heck we're doing here with this regular segment, you should still say welcome and give them an idea of what we're up to. Let's walk out into the hallway here where there's slightly less reverb. All right, let's tell you what's up in the night sky. Some easy things for all of you to look for. We've got in the evening sky Jupiter and Saturn both up at sunset. And in the early evening, you can find Jupiter off there in the east, southeast, looking like the brightest star in the sky. And Saturn in the southwest in the early evening, very high up,

looking kind of yellowish near the twin Gemini stars, Castor and Pollux. And if you're up in the pre-dawn sky, you can see Mars in the southwest before dawn, looking yellowish, reddish. And those are fun things to look for. Something coming up in the pre-dawn sky, you can see Mars in the southwest before dawn, looking yellowish, reddish. And those are fun things to look for. Something coming up in a little while. We've got on April 8th, remember, there will be a solar eclipse viewable from certain parts of the world, particularly across the South Pacific, if you happen to hang out there, ranging from New Zealand and then over into Central and Northern South America.

You will see either a total eclipse of the sun or an annular eclipse, depending on where you are in the path. And this is called a hybrid eclipse because you get both types, depending on where you are in the path. And if you are in other places off that path, you may see a partial eclipse, including the southern and southeastern parts of the United States, as well as Mexico and into South America. So take a look on our website. We'll provide links for you to find information about what and when and where you can see it. Let's go on to this week in space history. We're at the 40th anniversary of the first Gemini manned flight, and that occurred on March 23, 1965, starting the Gemini program up in terms of human flights.

First American spacecraft with two astronauts on board. Indeed. Excellent, Matt. That could be our random space fact. It could have been, but now it can't. You want to do random space fact? Let's do random space fact. Let's go back on the racquetball court. Okay, I'll follow you in. Random space fact!

Random space Fact! Oh, that is so much nicer than anything you can do digitally. Not all episodes are this goofy, by the way, but most are. Okay, Random Space Fact. The Viking landers landed on Mars in 1976. They carried scoops that scooped up soil, stuck the soil inside three different experiments, searching for life on the red planet. One looked promising, but it turns out it just had activity because the surface of Mars is actually really, really nasty to the building blocks of life.

Highly oxidizing caused a massive chemical reaction. On to the trivia contest, Matt. Sure, why not? What was our question? Our question is we asked you on Venus, where the most abundant atmospheric gas is carbon dioxide, what is the second most abundant gas? How'd we do? Lots of responses this week from all over the world, as usual. People hearing us on the radio, hearing us on the website.

And our winner is Cindy Chambers. Cindy Chambers of Little Rock, Arkansas, who got it right. She said nitrogen. Now, she didn't provide the additional information that a lot of listeners did, like Jamie Conn-Janette or Janae. He even told us that the percentage of nitrogen in the Venusian atmosphere, Venetian or Venusian? Venusian. I guess Venusian would be northern Italy. Venetian or Venusian?

Venusian. I guess Venusian would be northern Italy. In the Venusian atmosphere is 3.5%, 3.5% nitrogen, most of it being carbon dioxide? Almost all carbon dioxide, just like Mars' atmosphere, though Mars is very thin, Venus very, very thin. So we thank Jamie for that extra information. But it is Cindy whose winning entry was randomly chosen as our winner this week. And so a Planetary Radio t-shirt is going out to you, Cindy, real soon. Thanks for playing.

What do you got for us next week? Well, I'm kind of getting into this concept of the seconds. So this time I'm going to ask you, in honor of us going on to XM Satellite Radio, what was the second spacecraft to orbit the Earth? The second Earth-orbiting spacecraft. What was its name? Win your Planetary Radio t-shirt. If you were chosen with the right answer, go to planetary.org slash radio and enter our contest. And get those entries into us by Monday, March 28 at noon Pacific time. Monday, March 28, noon Pacific time. We will randomly choose from among the correct answers, and that winner will get a Planetary Radio t-shirt

and hear their name on this exciting radio show now heard across North America on XM Public Radio, Channel 133, in addition to a whole bunch of other groovy places. Groovy tins. All right, we about done here? We're done. But we've got to go back in the racquetball court to say goodbye. Okay, let's walk back in.

Okay, here we are. Oh, I love this. All right, everybody, go out there, look up in the night sky, and think about palm trees swaying in the breeze. Thank you, and good night. And that's Bruce Betts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society, and right now from a racquetball court at the Braun Athletic Facility, California Institute of Technology. He joins us each week here for What's Up.

That's it for this edition of Planetary Radio. Join us next time for an update on Cassini, now circling Saturn. Have a great week, everyone.