Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - One Last Blast: Author of ‘The Martian’ Andy Weir with JPL Chief Engineer Rob Manning

Episode Date: December 14, 2022

A rollicking conversation with two of the most entertaining, most creative Planetary Radio guests across our 20-year history about the role of creativity in space and life. Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and “Project Hail Mary” have been New York Times number one bestsellers. Rob Manning oversees all engineering operations at the Jet Propulsion Lab, and knows as much as any human being about how to land on the red planet. Sarah Al-Ahmed helps Mat Kaplan celebrate the success of Artemis 1, while Bruce Betts receives his 20th anniversary gift from Mat! Discover more at  https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/2022-rob-manning-andy-weirSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Oh boy, Andy Weir and Rob Manning together 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. He is the author of The Martian, Artemis, and Project Hail Mary. The other guy is the Jet Propulsion Lab's chief engineer, a position he reached after establishing himself as the go-to guy for safely landing robots on Mars. Both have been heard here many times. I have dreamed of getting them together. Now, with just three episodes to go as host, Andy and Rob will join me for one of the most entertaining, provocative, funny, and enlightening conversations in our 20-year history. It's also one of the longest, but I don't think most of you

will mind. And if you stay till the end, you'll hear Bruce Betts reacting well to the 20th anniversary gift I'll give him. Incoming host Sarah Alamed will be here in a minute to help us celebrate the very successful completion of the Artemis I mission. And as you'll hear me mention to Sarah, I spent a couple of delightful hours at Navy Base San Diego on board the USS Portland. In that great ship's cavernous, semi-submersible bay sat the Artemis I Orion capsule. The December 9 edition of the Downlink, our free weekly newsletter, came out too soon to capture the splashdown, but it does mark the 50th anniversary of the last time humans visited the moon. That was Apollo 17, of course, with Gene Cernan, Ron Evans, and geologist Harrison Schmidt on the crew. There's a great photo of

these heroes at planetary.org slash downlink. The Planetary Society is also celebrating NASA's decision to launch the Near Earth Object, or NEO Surveyor, in 2028. And thank goodness, we'll finally have that dedicated infrared space telescope that will find many more asteroids that cross our path. Want to know what a big space rock can do? How about the one that may have generated a tsunami 80 stories high? This wave may have swept across Mars a few billion years ago. That story and more are waiting for you along with the free digital edition of the Planetary Report,

our quarterly magazine. Sarah, welcome back. I hope that I have just driven you green with envy because I know you've already seen the selfie I took as I was standing just a few feet away from the Orion capsule recovered as part of the Artemis one mission. So cool. That is so cool. I'm still looking forward to having adventures like that in the future, but I'm glad you got to do that. How,

how was it? Was it burnt to a crisp? It was pretty toasty. It was quite toasty, but in very good shape, apparently from, from what I was told by the folks, the NASA folks who were there. And by the way, on next week's show, I'll feature some of the conversations I had, including one with Shannon Walker, a very experienced astronaut who has written on Crew Dragon and Soyuz. And we talked a little bit about how they compare with Orion. Crew Dragon and Soyuz. And we talked a little bit about how they compare with Orion.

Anyway, she and some other folks that we will talk to next week. Tell you what, we'll post at least one of my photos of the capsule in the bay, the submersible bay on the USS Portland. But there'll be more stuff next week. I know you were excited. Absolutely. I mean, not only does this mark the end to the Artemis 1 mission, an amazingly successful end, but it also splashed down 50 years to the day since the Apollo 17 astronauts landed on the moon. So it all came around full circle, and that's just so cool and poetic.

Just cosmic timing. I love it. And it really was not intentional. This is just how the things came out, I believe. You have your own Artemis coverage coming up in what, your second show? Yeah, my second show on January 11th in 2023. I spoke with Jeremy Graber, who's the assistant launch director at Kennedy Space Center. We had a whole wonderful conversation about the launch, what went on that night, but also about the passengers aboard the Orion capsule, the three mannequins and the little plushie Snoopy.

I wanted to know what was going to happen with that plushie Snoopy. So I got the details on that. Oh, that's great. All right. Good reason, along with many others, to tune in because, of course, Sarah will in, what, three short weeks now with the January 4 show. That will be when she takes over the microphone here on Planetary Radio. And your first guest on that first show, I hear he's sometimes okay. Sometimes okay.

Well, of course, you are my first guest, Matt. I needed to talk to you about your experience on Planetary Radio, and thank you for everything you've done over these years. So additionally, thank you for being my first guest, Matt. I needed to talk to you about your experience on Planetary Radio, and thank you for everything you've done over these years. So additionally, thank you for being my first guest. You are very welcome, and thank you for that honor. And you'll be back next week for another one of these brief segments up front. And then on my very last program, when we will continue the tradition of talking with Planetary Society colleagues, a little review of the year 2022 in space. It has been quite a year.

And Sarah will be part of that panel. So I'll talk to you then as well. Gosh, what a year. There's so much to go over. It was really exciting. You bet. Thanks, Sarah. Thanks so much, Matt.

I could easily take 10 minutes telling you about my guests, and we'd cover just their highlights. But they can speak for themselves, and they do so at length in the glorious conversation you're about to hear. You won't soon forget it if you enjoy it half as much as I did. Here are Rob Manning and Andy Weir. I cannot tell you how much I have been looking forward to this with some trepidation because I didn't want to screw it up because I knew how great it could be. Just as we've been working to get Rob's mic working, I've been reassured because, Andy, you've been so great with your insults and Rob's technical ability. The guy can land things on Mars, cannot get his microphone working.

No, no, no. I'm very specialized. No, no, no, no. I think what they were telling you at the school district was that you're special. You're a systems engineer, Rob. Yeah, I delegate to important people with technical skills. He's a hardware guy. I'm a software guy.

Yeah, yeah. Andy, could you explain this method call to this microphone? I just don't get it. Before you get into that, could I introduce the two of you? Because, I mean, there are going to be a lot of firsts in this Planetary Radio. I don't know if it's a first for me to introduce somebody during the interview, but I generally don't. I don't know if it's a first for me to introduce somebody during the interview, but I generally don't. Rob Manning came to JPL from Caltech as a draftsman on the Galileo Jupiter mission. By the early 1990s, he was chief engineer for Mars Pathfinder, the brilliantly successful mission that put us back on the road to Mars and included that cute little Sojourner rover that will someday become Mark the Martian Watney's pet.

And since then, it has been Mars all the way down, though he is now also the lab's overall chief engineer. So welcome, Rob. Thank you, Matt. You're welcome. Andy Weir is the author of not one, but two, number one New York Times bestselling novels, The Martian, and his most recent book, Project Hail Mary, which I've described as having an average of one great laugh and one fascinating innovation on every page. In between these, oh, look at that. Rob is now promoting the book. I can get my copy.

In between these, you can have some great fun on the moon with Artemis. I also recommend Cheshire Crossing, his wonderful feisty graphic novel created with artist Sarah Anderson that brings together three of the greatest young female heroines of all time, Alice Wonderland Liddell, and thank you for making her hair black as it actually was, Wendy Darling, and Dorothy Gale. I highly recommend it. I read it just a couple of weeks ago. Welcome, guys. Welcome again. Hi. Thanks.

It's great to be here. It's a great pleasure for me, too. Your final Planetary Radio with guests. That's right. With external guests. Absolutely right. When did you start? It's 20 years ago. 20's right. With external guests. Absolutely. When did you start? It's 20 years ago. 2002. So in the time that planetary radio has been going,

we lost a planet. We did. It wasn't my fault. I hold you responsible. When you started planetary radio, there were nine planets. Now there are eight. This is supposed to be the planetary society. You're supposed to promote planets, not have them vanish. Oh, man. In fact, not only that, they're big on planetary defense. Right. I know. That's a big thing.

They didn't defend Pluto. Maybe Pluto was a threat. My parents' generation, they grew up being taught that Pluto was a planet, right? So I saw a great picture of Pluto, the planet, and a little talk bubble that says, I was big enough for your mom. I guess we can run that on NPR. Gentlemen, I'm going to ask you to, the reason I did your intros live is that, as I warned you, I'm going to ask you to continue those introductions of each other, something else I've never done. Rob, would you please tell us about Andy Weir?

Okay. Well, Andy Weir, he's this software guy from the Central California area, and he had this, apparently he had this idea of writing this book about Mars, but he wasn't that confident in himself. So he had to kind of do it online. He had a bunch of people, and I really wish I had been one of those people, to comment on his, was it weekly posts that you put out of your book? Monthly? A chapter a month, roughly. Chapter a month. And then people commented and you went back and read lines.

Like, you know, what kind of confidence is that? You know, I kind of count other people to help me out too. I read the whole thing is that was it someone like Penguin Books picks you up or something like that? Penguin Random House. The imprint at the time was called Crown Publishing. They're gone now and they've become Ballantine. I have a pretty high opinion of him. Well, you know, I wish he wasn't here to listen to this. I mean, this is really embarrassing. I thought that was it. You know, I think, and it goes back to how you see the world, right? There's a sense of what's really magical about engineering or about making things is that we live in a physical world that we can pull

things together and pull ideas together. And Andy loves integrating that component in with humanity because it's important to remember that we're also physical beings that interact with this world. That's the magic of being alive. And Andy, you're able to pull in science and engineering in an actualization sense with enough, with a closeness to the actual universe that we live in, that really allows for that interaction to feel real and feel dramatic. And by the way, now that's how my world feels like. Even though, Hakim, it's amazing how much time we spend in PowerPoint space staring at the universe of bullets and block diagrams. No, but so you had sometimes pulled yourself out of that and look at the reality. about Andy's books. And I think a lot what we do too, is we try to explore ideas and we build

up complicated systems to explore our universe, not for the sake of going out there, not for the just the sake of looking, but to actually change what's in our brains. And that's what Andy does to the reader. Oh, thanks so much. It's really nice. Your turn, Andy. Aw, thanks so much. It's really nice. Your turn, Andy. Well, we're all really proud of Rob. He hasn't had any heroin in six months. That's very good. I mean, that's verifiably true.

Rob, can you confirm? In the past six months, have you had any heroin? I have had virtually zero heroin in the last six months. Zero heroin in the last six months. And we're all just really, really proud of that. And also, I just want to point out that he was not convicted of murder. Not once. Not even close. Not once. He did not get convicted.

Seriously. It takes, what, 20 years to be an excellent musician. It takes, in your case, about six months to be a good writer. But all it takes is one time to kill somebody, and then all of a sudden- You're a murderer. Yeah. I think you both missed your callings, apparently. Yeah. I think you both missed your callings.

Seriously, it's it's it's really amazing the stuff that Rob has done and got to be in charge of and be a part of. And it's it's very I'm very envious. When I first wrote The Martian, of course, I did it as he described. I posted it a chapter at a time to my Web site. I had no contacts. I didn't know anyone at NASA or JPL or anything like that. And then it started to gain popularity. And then I had people like Rob contacting me. He's like, hey, I'm Rob Manning. I land stuff on Mars. I want to tell you that this is really neat. I'm like, wait, wait, go back. Wait, stop. I think I remember this is more about NASA than JPL, but I remember one time it was like Christmas time, and on ISS they had to do a pseudo-emergency spacewalk

to fix a water leak outside the station, and it was on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day or whatever. So I was at my mom's, and I was just hanging out, kind of bored, and reading my email. And I got email from people at Mission Control for the station saying like, hey, we're all just sitting here waiting for the for the emergency spacewalk to work to start. We were really expecting to have to have a full staff here. So we're kind of bored. Just thought we'd email you and say we like the Martian.

And I'm like, oh, I can honestly say I didn't expect an email from mission control. Yeah. So maybe Rob can speak to this too. My favorite bit of feedback that I've gotten from the space community in general, once I got to meet all the movers and shakers and stuff like that, you know, everyone at JPL and at Johnson Space Center and all the way up to the DC office of NASA and everything like that, you know, everyone at JPL and at Johnson Space Center and all the way up to the D.C. office of NASA and everything like that. You mean when they got to meet you?

When they got to meet me, yes, when they were so privileged. Yeah, when I got to meet all these people and do all these tours and look at all this awesome stuff, the one thing everyone agreed on was that the least accurate part of the Martian is the high degree of cooperation shown between NASA and JPL. Oh, man. Yeah, I didn't like it. part of the Martian is the high degree of cooperation shown between NASA and JPL. Yeah, I like that. I like that fiction. I like that fiction. It was great. Gentlemen, we could just keep job owning like this for the next hour or two. But let me get into some questions that at least initially, and I warned you there,

I think, I hope there's a method to my badness, but some questions up front that you've been asked 6.02 times 10 to the 23rd times. What turned the two of you into space nerds, space science and engineering nerds, Rob? Okay. Well, I grew up in the, for the most part, in the Puget Sound, around in the islands, Puget Sound, far away from being technical. I, you know, the first time I met a real engineer was not until many, many years later. In fact, I thought engineers drove trains. Yeah. So, I don't know.

Oh, when you were born, that's what they did. That's what they did. I mean, back when you were born, that's what they did. That's what they did. I mean, back when you were born, that's what engineer meant. So I was reading National Geographic Magazine and Occular Mechanics. And those are the two main sources of technical knowledge that I gained, as well as there's a wonderful series, a time-life series of hardback books that were very popular back then. And I collected all 40 of them. And there were great pictures and stories in there about science and engineering, life, biology, all sorts of things. But the one I liked best was, it was mechanistically called Man in Space. It was people in space. And I had all these pictures of astronauts learning how to

operate a space suit. And I just came, these people are really going. And of course, I had these pictures, Chelsea Blonstell's paintings from the Collier's magazines were still in there, as well as Vera von Braun's images of what Mars exploration might look like, spinning space stations, even before 2000 Space Odyssey came out, which by the way, blew my socks off when it came out as a kid. And I just found that the idea of inventing things, I wanted to be an inventor. And I think a space inventor, I was even okay about being a construction worker in a space station.

I thought that might be kind of fun. You'd settle for such a lowly position. Oh man, would I ever. I mean, the whole thing that you could buy these Revell models of Mercury and Gemini. And then when Apollo, I was just following Apollo. Anyway, long story short, I was growing up right in the era of human space exploration and space exploration in general. The Mariner spacecraft was sent out to fly past Venus and Mars and eventually Mercury. We're just like, oh my gosh, these little dots in the sky are becoming real. And of course, in all these books about science, these pictures we had of Jupiter and Saturn,

we had a little tiny, they were like blurry little circles with stripes and then a ring around it. And that was it. It says, what is it? We don't know. Very cool. What a great time to grow up. Can you see below my right shoulder down in that bookcase? That's the life science library. There it is. You got it right there. Man in space. That was my favorite one in the series too. One of the proudest moments of my life as a kid i found a mistake and i'm centered into time life and they sent me back a thank you note with a little paste in caption to correct the caption that was incorrect on one of the illustrations made my made my year probably made my life andy, what were your influences? I mean, what turned you into a nerd? Well, I think genetics, largely. My father was, I mean, both my parents are still alive. So when

I speak in the past tense, I'm meaning that they're now retired. But my father was a linear accelerator physicist. And so he made electrons go really fast and hit stuff. My mother was an electrical engineer. So my dad, he's all about the physics and science and stuff like that. My mom was just doing it for the paycheck. She didn't have a lot of passion about it. She was good at it, but she was doing it just to make the money. What my mom really liked is reading. So that combination kind of makes me hopelessly fall into the science fiction setting. Another thing is my father had never threw away a book in his life so far, I don't think. And he has this giant bookshelf just full of every science fiction book he has ever owned, dating all the way back to his own childhood. So

I grew up reading like the uh juveniles science fiction books from the 1950s and 60s and stuff not reprints like the original one so they have sort of a smell to them the pages are yellowed a bit and because the intended audience are like 15 and 14 year old boys they have ads for cigarettes at the midpoint seriously they'll be like you'll be reading along ordinary page, and then there'll be a glossy page that's an ad for like Kent cigarettes. And then you just continue. Keep talking, guys. I'm going to do something else I've never done.

Yeah. You just carry on the show. We hate dead air. I'll be right back. So, Andy, did you read R.C. Clarke and Asimov and Heinlein? Yeah. Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein are my holy trinity. Yeah, yeah.

So they're the ones I really grew up reading. Okay, here we are. Starman Jones. I've read that. I remember that. Original edition. Yeah, that's it. Fantastic.

I get them mixed up because he has a few of them. Is that the one where he's basically in the space kind of Foreign Legion equivalent? Is that Starman Jones? He becomes a navigator. Oh, okay. On a trading vessel where they speak Finnish? Yeah. Something like that.

Yeah. Seriously, I remember that. I think you're right. Yeah. And you think it's going to be the woman that he ends up with, and she doesn't anyway. It's pretty good. It's great stuff. There's that one.

That's Heinlein. the woman that he ends up with and she doesn't anyway. It's pretty good. It's great stuff. There's that one. And then there's the one, I'm confusing it with a different Heinlein one where it's kind of like a soldier space. Starship Troopers. Starship Troopers. That is maybe the one I'm thinking of, although I thought the one I was thinking of was more obscure, but maybe it is that one.

But then there's also Have Space Suit Will Travel. Oh, that's what got me into it. That was my first Heinlein story. Rob, you're nodding a lot, Rob. Were you also a fan of these Golden Era guys? Oh, yeah. All these guys. And I just, it really got me into reading. I mean, it was the kind of thing where you just, especially, I love

the little, the smaller stories too, where you can just sort of like sneak off during a little break in school and just hide your book in the backpack again and start over again. Well, you're talking about Rob. I did the exact same thing. I would sneak, I would have a Heinlein book or Clark or Asimov or whatever in my backpack at school and I'd sneak up and read it. And the book Red Planet by Heinlein has the distinction of being the first time I ever read a book start to finish in a single day. Oh, wow.

Yeah. And so I was a teenager. I was in school. It was a school day. But all of my classes ended up having like a lot of boring stuff going on. So I was just like in the back, like reading my book. And yeah. If only that had been the real Mars, we could you know you have to it gets chilly

at night but you can still wander around you can wander around you ice skate across the great blank plains of mars yeah yeah i i you know think about these the universes they took you from i mean my world was i didn't have technical or college educated parents or environment. So these places just feel like I really was going to a different world. I mean, really. And their imaginations that they had, especially back then, because they were inventing stuff way ahead of the time. And we've seen so much of science fiction authors' visions come true. seen so much of science fiction authors' visions come true. And it's partly because they inspired engineers, right, to do the very thing that they suggested. I just find it amazing how much

innovation and imagination and curiosity these people had to make these books happen. I think that people give science fiction authors a little too much credit. They often say like, I'll say something like, yeah, I'm a science fiction author, but it's easy to be a science fiction author. You just come up with pie ideas and inspire the engineers to which I say no it's not I guarantee you there's nothing that a sci-fi author came up with that an engineer didn't already come up with I respectfully disagree with you because you prove as I said on almost every page of your books that you do come up with stuff which apparently is workable and i don't think anybody has thought of because nobody's put a human being in that situation before i i appreciate the compliment and i won't i won't spend too much time trying to fend off

praise but uh i i will say that like absolutely everything in the mission profile of the Ares missions in the Martian has been thought of. It's basically a variant of Mars Direct that I updated for modern technology because Mars Direct was invented in the 80s. And when I wrote the Martian, we had ion propulsion. And I think that'll be a big part of it. And so I updated things. But absolutely everything related to the mission profile in the Martian is stuff many on propulsion and I think that'll be a big part of it. And so I updated things, but absolutely

everything related to the mission profile in the Martian is stuff many, many people have already thought of. Well, I, I, but I think, but I think it's really, and that that's true with almost all of engineering too, right? I mean, I, I hate to say it. So when there's, when we see these things that, that we've done as engineers, we're really putting together this huge, we're staying on the shoulders of giants is what we are. And yes, Andy, I'm sure you're right that much of their ideas are coming from other things they've read, other technologists and futurists and other people who look at what's the trends in technology and things like that. But ultimately, it's putting them all together and integrating into a storyline. That's what I do. I integrate all these different pieces into a story that hangs together and doesn't violate the laws of physics, which is my only other constraint. Oh, and budgets and schedules. Don't forget those.

Yeah. There's that. But I do think that it's very analogous. And so innovation is often not so much magical single idea, but the conglomeration of integrating these ideas into a whole. And so you shouldn't underestimate that. I mean, just little things. And, you know, the whole idea is using hydrazine drip, right, to get water, you know. You know, it's people like my group, we like we wear skate suits we try to stay away from that yeah and so our so but the other hand is a wait a minute now turns out if you're careful it's okay you just have to be very careful really careful you know what's funny about

about that specific scene in the martian or in in the book anyway somebody worked out you know and sent it to me, said like, okay, well, I had given enough information that they could work this out. They knew the volume of the HAB from other things that I told. They knew how much hydrazine he reduced and over what time period he did it all and stuff like that. Okay. Based on that information, the temperature of the HAB would have gone up to about 350 degrees Celsius. And so they emailed me that and I'm like, okay, listen here, you little. But no, I said, Hey, that's pretty cool. A good point. I wish you'd been around when I was doing the, uh, you know, everybody can comment and I can make changes. This was long after the book

was in print, but I said like, you know, to him, I said, well,. This was long after the book was in print. But I said, like, you know, to him, I said, well, off camera, of course, Mark, I mean, the Ares site, the base, was expending a lot of energy to keep the half warm. So it would just not have to expend that energy. But still, you know, bite me. that energy, but still, you know, bite me. Listen, you guys are demonstrating exactly why I wanted to talk to you about the topic I want to move to now and why I thought it would be so fun to bring you together. Well, that's a lie.

I just wanted to get the two of you together in a conversation that I could be part of, our witness at least. Don't tell my other guests on the other 1,105 shows that we've now completed. But you two are, first of all, among the most fun, for sure. But you are absolutely the only two that I think I have done actual onstage stand-up schtick with, because I've done that with both of you. But what really distinguishes you, I propose, and I think you've provided proof of this, is the vast amount of creative spirit that you bring to your work. And I'm betting that either of you could write a book about this and probably should. But it's the main thing that I want to talk to you about today.

I mean, do you see yourselves as being extraordinarily creative or even slightly above the norm, Rob? No, not even close. No. Well, we're done. All right. Next question. Because, so I think part of it, you have to understand, it's not just the word creative. You could be creative in so many different ways. I paint abstract paintings with my wife. We do. And I struggle with being, trying to be creative. I played, I'm a jazz trumpet player.

trouble with being, you know, trying to be creative. I played, I'm a jazz trumpet player. I tried to be creative there in that world, but I'm realizing the part that makes creativity work in some sense is the same thing that makes complex systems work within the laws of physics. In some sense, it's not, because anybody can throw anything together on, you know, you can throw paint on a piece of paper. You can have a lot of fun with that. There's no doubt about it. I wouldn't stop anyone from doing anything. But a lot of the most effective creativity, the one that catches people's attention, are the ones that seem to work.

They hold together in some context under constraints where people find solutions to an idea that allow you to either ask new questions or solve problems for you. So I think artists do that. Musicians do that. When you try to, when you try to, a musical phrase, build up on tension, you're kind of reaching a musical climax. And then you resolve it, come back, come back to it. You've actually taken the elicitor on a journey. And I think if you think about what we try to do when we build complex systems is that we have this journey in mind, an actual journey of trying to make something happen. But what we're trying to do is we're trying to find that space, trying to fly. I use the mental analogy of Han Solo and Luke Skywalker with the Millennium Falcon flying through the asteroid field and dodging humanistic physical constraints on the characters, which gives people a place to realize that these are real limits and challenges.

How do you find a sweet spot for solving your problems in life. Because all of us as human beings, we're constantly surfing, trying to find solutions in our own lives for everything. Just waking up in the morning, remembering to pay your traffic ticket or just paying your bills, just living your life as a series of mental obstacles. I have a traffic ticket right here. Right here. Thank you. I got caught speeding yesterday. I got caught speeding yesterday.

Andy's, well, look at this. They both have traffic tickets. I feel left out. I don't have one to hold on to. Not only do I have a traffic ticket, we both have traffic tickets just right here on our desk. In front of us, yes, to remind us to deal with them. Yeah. So that's why these things are so analogous to living the life. I think that's why people find what we're doing as

engineers intriguing, even though it's really about science, right? It's about the overcoming obstacles and finding solutions and resolving the tension to a musical climax from the musical climax to an ending. And I think that part of it is, I think, so essential to, is representative in the work that I do and the work that Andy does. Andy, does that resonate with you? But also, do you think of yourself as a particularly creative, innovative person? Well, it's hard for me to say nice things about myself. But yes, I do think of myself as being pretty creative.

I don't always succeed in what I'm trying to create, but I am creative. I like making things. The books that I write are the kind of thought experiment versions of making things. But also my hobby is just kind of being a maker. I like to make gizmos and devices and stuff. I've been working on a purely physical computer for calculating the day of the week for any given date. So you just turn dials to set a date and it will move gears and stuff around and output the day of the week that that was. Babbage. So, yeah, maybe this time. But it's always like back to the drawing board redesign. I love to make things. And as for stories, one thing I found is that if I make a setup, if I make a system where interesting stuff happens, then the story comes along pretty easily. Like I'm like, okay, my particular approach is to get real technical, get real detailed, much further, much more detailed even than shows up in my books. Like you see like maybe 10 to 20% of the research that I've done makes it into the book at all, but I go way the hell down the rabbit hole. So I'm like, okay, I came up with a, how to do a Mars mission. And then I say like, here's an event that strands a guy. Well, now I, I know all the details of the Mars mission. So

how can he make use of these things to survive? How did they end up saving you? Yada, yada, yada. The story kind of evolves naturally. Once you create the world in which it takes place, same with project Hail Mary. It was a really interesting problem that humanity is faced with, and the problem itself provides the tools for a solution. And then we go from there. And basically, I write very well-trodden science fiction concepts. Like, my three books are about a guy who's stranded on a planet, a woman living on his city on the moon, and a guy trying to save Earth from an existential threat. And that's the first contact story, the third one, right? So all these things have been done over and over again by science fiction authors everywhere. So I'm almost never coming up with a

totally new concept. What I'm doing is taking well-worn science fiction concepts and doing it my way. And my way is like, all right, let's delve into the science of this. I've been, you know, I have put thought into a time travel story, right? I spent like a month trying to work out the physics to make sure that momentum and energy are conserved when you travel in time. It gets very difficult. And I'm like, okay, well, that's a problem. Because right away, my little physics-obsessed brain goes like, if you can ever cause a failure in conservation of energy or momentum, either one, you can make a perpetual motion

device. Like, sure. Yeah. If you give me any system at all that doesn't conserve momentum and energy, then I can give you a perpetual motion device. I can give you free energy. I get mail from these guys now and then. Free energy guys. Yes. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's why, that's why when everybody was excited about the EM drive, I was like, I don't know what's going on, but I know it doesn't work. Right. If you give me an EM drive, I will give you infinite energy

because eventually the energy that you're putting, because the EM drive allegedly creates propellant-less propulsion based on a constant energy input. So eventually, its kinetic energy will be greater than the energy being put into it. So, but Andy, that you're doing exactly what we do in the sense that you're trying to live with a bunch of constraints. You're trying to put together into a puzzle to see if you can get to some goal, some outcome, some sort of vision. The vision is where the creativity really lives, right? But then when you put all these obstacles intentionally, in your case, intentionally, well, I want to follow the laws of physics. You don't have to do that as an author,

but you want to because that's part of who you are. Right. And actually that makes it more fun because in some sense, those are the cool obstacles that you're trying to find. That's exactly the world I live in. And when I say I'm not creative, I mean, I don't necessarily, I'm not creative at any step. It's really about dodging. It's like living, like a painter that- Solving the problems. Right. So it's like a painter who spends half their time trying to make themselves a new color with new dyes, trying to make that color that they just wanted, they needed for that particular application

with the right color spectrum. And so it's the same idea. An example of problem solving creativity I always like to use is the cotton gin. The cotton gin is an incredibly, it's very straightforward. It was so straightforward, in fact, that the guy who invented it barely made any money at all because everyone could just make their own from stuff lying around their barns. But it's something nobody had thought of until somebody did. And it's this very creative solution to a real problem that people were having at the time. I don't want to go too deep into the history of it or describe it.

problem that people were having at the time. I don't want to go too deep into the history of it or describe it, but if anybody's interested who's listening, just look up the cotton gin and you'll see an incredibly simple solution to a problem that had been plaguing the whole cotton industry. So you were saying, Rob, about keeping true to the physics being my personal approach. It is, but also one thing I've found is that the physics of the universe that we live in are very, very good at being internally consistent. It's a good thing. Yeah. And so if I stick with real physics, then my, then my fictional technology won't run into problems later. I just have to, I just have to run the physics forward, you know? So as I'm writing, I come up with, Oh, what if, what if he

does this, then what would that thing do? And I'm like, well, I've kept within the realm of real physics. So what would real physics do? I'm perfectly happy. I can enjoy soft sci-fi, Star Trek, Star Wars,

although I would categorize Star Wars as technically fantasy just with a sci-fi veneer. And I also like fantasy, so it's all good. I'm not dissing any of these properties. But when I watch Star Trek and I see the transporter, I have a lot of questions. I have so many questions. I'm like, transporter technology should be the exact center of all development from that point on oh you can beam that you can

just send matter as energy beams to other places at presumably the speed of light ish okay well what what and not only that but it's like you're taking something apart and it stays in like a pattern buffer for a while then you put it out couldn't you just like solve anything and you're basically stopping time for that thing it's like oh you know rob is sick beam him into a pattern buffer adjust it so he's not sick and duplicating stuff and just like i have so many questions and start track is like yeah the answer to those is shut up and And that's fine because it's fiction. You can do that. But yet it's inspired people. I mean, there's some fascinating quantum teleportation articles and discussions about

transportation through a wormhole as is recently tested Caltech with Caltech researchers here recently, transporting a single qubit through a kind of makeshift one dimensional wormhole. But those ideas in some something inspired those people. We think those things, they see if they can keep pushing, keep asking the question whether it's possible. But you're right. I mean, these guys, they needed a mechanism. And I know that if you read the making of Star Trek, they do talk about it.

It's like, we need a way to get there. Hurry, because this is going to take forever. The show is only- Yeah. Roddenberry, he didn't want to have to subject people to shuttle missions to get them down to the surface of the planet yeah and they didn't have the budget they didn't have the budget to film ships landing and taking off all the time so they did the transporter which is great you know that that's that's awesome yeah well one thing i found as a science fiction nerd and then with a lot of science fiction nerd friends is that every discussion of how a transporter works

eventually devolves into a philosophical discussion of what is the human soul. Sure. It's only a matter of time before you get from one to the other. There's been some great science fiction writing about exactly that topic. I don't know about you, but I want to stretch my legs.

I'll be back with Rob and Andy right after this message from the boss. Hi, everybody. Bill Nye here, CEO of the Planetary Society. Everything we do, from advocacy for missions that matter, to funding new technology, to grants for asteroid hunters, and sharing the wonder of space exploration with the world only happens thanks to friends like you who share our passion for space. When you invest in the Planetary Fund today, a generous member will match your donation up to $100,000. Every dollar you give will go twice as far as we explore the worlds of our solar system and beyond, will go twice as far as we explore the worlds of our solar system and beyond, defend Earth from the impact of an asteroid or comet, and find life beyond Earth by making the search for life a space exploration priority.

With you by our side, we'll continue to advocate for missions that matter for years to come. How about powering our work in 2023? Please donate today. Visit planetary.org slash planetary fund. Thank you for your generous support and happy new year. writing or engineering with a goal in mind of the journey is the story element in that, building to a climax, which certainly Andy has demonstrated he's very capable of taking us along on that ride. That also intrigues me that finding this element of story across all these different disciplines and life activities. It is. We do it.

It's not that we set ourselves out to create those things. It's just that storytelling is what life really is. We're experiencing the stories once ourselves. I mean, I look back in the period of since the early 90s when I was really got involved in the Mars exploration site. I look back at that journey and it boggles my mind. I mean, all the things that happened, things that worked, things that didn't work, actual how failures inspired new inventions, new ideas. If Mars Polar Lander hadn't vanished, still missing in action, folks, you can find it.

Oh, hey, whoa, wait, hang on. Did you look behind the refrigerator? This is Illinois, not Mars. You're terrible at this. Exactly. So I really feel that this story, that what's happened has been just, I mean, for example, I was going to say we wouldn't have invented either Spirit and Opportunity or the Skycrane Maneuver, the Sense State, without that failure, which inspired us to actually figure out, well, think out of the box and start turning things upside down.

Still to this day, I believe the Skycrane Maneuver was invented by Wile E. Coyote. And you guys just rolled with it. I guess it should have said acne on the side. I look at that and I'm like, what complete idiot. Oh, wait, no, it was you, wasn't it? Yes, it was. But jokes aside, I do remember watching the Pathfinder landing. It was on the 4th of July, wasn't it?

Yes, it was. Yeah, it was the 4th of July. And my nerd, so this is the type of friends I have. We all got together so we could watch the Pathfinder landing on TV. Like we all had like a party. My friend made a joke that to this day we still use. It's like, unfortunately, the humans didn't know that the tetrahedron is the official symbol for we declare war on your planet. That's great. that's good that's very good oh yeah yeah then there was a great article that came out it was making the rounds this was before people really had email so it was making the rounds at

xerox copies and stuff like that but it was like the martian air Force says that the UFO sightings in the Chrissy Planitia area were just swamp gas. There's nothing to see. I'll look there. I will tell you a great David Brin very short story in which Lander comes down on Mars, lands on the son of the Martian ruler, who then swears vengeance against all Earthlings, but especially the Planetary Society, because he finds a DVD or a CD on this that is from the Planetary Society. Oh, they're the ones who killed my son. And so he comes to earth and he starts with killing carl sagan um but and that goes from there sorry i've told that story sense of humor oh oh yeah no i had this idea

for once for there being like native martians you know soft sci-fi story native martians and they find the viking lander and so they're like well this is alien technology we should take this apart and they're like we don't know what this is but oh what is it they they decided it comes from the uh hat snake cup people and they just always call it the hat snake cup people these people like hats snakes and cups i decided they read right to left and if you look at USA it looks like a hat a snake and a cup and so they just call

these aliens the hat snake cup people and develop an entire culture around them well they don't know anything about it these people like these five pointed stars they got like 50 of them on this thing and then it's like a bunch of stripes we don't know what the heraldry of the hat snake These people like these five-pointed stars. They got like 50 of them on this thing.

And then it's like a bunch of stripes. We don't know what the heraldry of the Hatsnake Cup people is all about. If they look closely at Mars Pathfinder, they will find a signature chip that we reduced all these signatures and stuff from kids and all over into a single piece of silicon. And of course, they'll find Homer Simpson, who is obviously the one in charge on Earth. The ideal human. Well, to be fair, I did come up with this idea long enough ago that there was no Pathfinder yet. It was just the only, there was like some Russian debris and the two Viking landers were the only human things you'd find on Mars.

Gentlemen, you are amply demonstrating once again that this was the right topic to bring up with you guys. Can you teach, Rob, can you teach creativity? Can you teach innovation, both to individuals? And how do you get teams to work creatively? It's tough enough just to keep them all cohesive, keep them all talking to each other. Rob, let's talk about your favorite topic, project and people management. Let's get deep into that bullet point space that you like to spend so much time in.

Exactly. Maybe we could talk about budgeting after this one, Matt. Yeah, why not? That's exciting. I think I'll wait for the movie. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of creativity in budgeting. I think I'll wait for the movie, but yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of creativity in budgeting. I think there is.

I think you can't, I don't think you can teach creativity itself, but you can create an environments where creativity is amplified. And so I think you can create a place of particularly how you manage the conversation with other people and how you create a yes and environment where people aren't shooting down each other's ideas, who are saying, yes, that's a good idea. And they're not just listening, but they're also writing them down. We have a place at JPL called Left Field, which is a room, which is just a huge wall, whiteboard and lots and lots of pens.

And you can draw with whiteboard pens and sticky notes and things like that. You throw ideas up there and people, you put yourself in those situations, you can create places and ideas where you enable the possibilities. And that's one thing, you're having an environment. But the second thing, you do need to have an appreciation of that, although process is important, following the rules and patterns for making things happen. But ultimately, all of the stuff that we do is done by human beings, not institutions, not big snake cup people. But people who are, we put these labels on ourselves, but we're really just a

bunch of people who are trying to figure out how to organize ourselves without bumping the elbows too much to allow ourselves to create and make something and contribute something. But you have to have that, hold that in your mind's eye. If you're a manager, a lot of people who are just, who look down are so focused on PowerPoint or the bullets or the process, they forget to stop and listen and sense the importance of sticking out of the box, turning things upside down, not being afraid to look at things that look wrong. You mentioned that the sky cream, well, who in their right mind would put the rocket above your lander? No one.

I mean, why would you do that? No one would do that. But yet the other hand, we did that on Pathfinder. We put a propulsion system, a solid rocket motor, it's above our airbag lander. And we said, well, what if that thing

was actually not so funky and solid rockets that are just on-off switches, but let's see if we can actually put something that controls it and does a nicer job of controlling it and letting it down. So does it actually play the Benny Hill theme song while that's going on? Yes, it does. Or is that just in my head? Okay.

It's one of the songs we play to wake up the engineers in the morning. That's an inspiration, no doubt. Andy, you, former ex-software engineer, obviously. I'm a former ex-software engineer. Does that mean I'm back to- It's just ex-software. But, I mean, it's already come up. When you wrote The Martian, it became, to a degree anyway, a collaborative effort. You were benefiting from the thoughts, if not the creativity.

I had a lot of fact checkers, basically. Yeah, yeah, right. That was great. I mean, what do you tell people when they come up to you and say, where do you come up with these ideas? How are you so creative? How are you so creative? Yeah, I get asked that and I don't know what to answer. Usually I it starts off with me thinking most of my stories start off with me thinking about some cool fancy thing. I don't know how to put it. It'd be like like the Martian started off not with me thinking about like, oh, I'm going to write a story.

story, I was just thinking about how, how can I update the Mars direct profile to take advantage of our more advanced technology that we now have? Like, so I say, I want to, I want to design a crewed mission to Mars, C-R-E-W-E-D, not C-R-U-D-E. I want to, you know, a humans to Mars mission. I want to design that. How do we make it work? And, you know, when I was working on all that, I was like, well, one nice thing about it being ion propulsion is you can abort anytime. There's not just, well, not anytime, but you can, there are lots of abort options. You don't have to wait until the next home in ellipse. That's kind of nice. Then I was like, okay, well, let's say they left and in an emergency and someone was still there. You know, that's where first I set up a system that I think is cool. Then comes the story. Same with Project Hail Mary.

I was like, I want to think about what we could do with a mass conversion fuel. Like, what could we do with engines that have a specific impulse of C? Sorry, an effective exhaust velocity of C, a specific impulse of C, sorry, an effective exhaust velocity of C, a specific impulse of C over G. Specific impulse is stupid. Why do you people use it? You're a scientist, for Christ's sake. I'm not a fan.

You think they're crazy. Effective exhaust velocity. It's loss of history. Well, all these people are always like, ah, metric, metric, metric. Have you ever talked to astronomers about some of the stupid stuff they do? That's like pico arc seconds per fortnight or something.

Yes. Stupid crap. How many parsecs can you make that run in? Nat. I love Star Wars. The Kessel Run requires you to go from two different locations, and there's a black hole directly between them. So the shorter a distance you can make that run in, it means the closer you got to the black hole. So it does make sense.

And so the bigger risk you were taking. So it's actually two black holes orbiting each other. two black holes orbiting each other. And the only way, the only way to do the Kessel run in under 12 parsecs is to literally go between the two black holes. That would work. Such that you don't touch either event horizon. It's extremely rare.

It's extremely difficult, extremely brave, and only the very best ships like the Falcon can do it. So don't be a dissing. And a pilot who, you know, probably has such guts that he would have shot first. Yeah, definitely shot first.

Rob, here's a quote that I found from you. I always recommend that you should not worry about career advancement too soon. Spend a decade in your career doing real work. Build something. Use your hands. Test it. Learn from your mistakes. Put yourself out there on the

edge where you will force your eyes wide open. Do you stand by that crazy advice? And then I want to get Andy's feeling about it. Absolutely. No, I think that's probably just something he says in performance reviews. Yeah, I think you're going to need to stay in your current position for another 10 years. Dead years. Yeah, yeah. Keep at it. That's good. I'm going to try that approach. Thank you.

Still good advice? I still, I feel, and I think particularly in a situation where you learn about trial and error and making mistakes. I mean, we do have, I think there's, I fear that there's a path. Which is why that employee has to stay in the position for 10 years. A little longer, a little bit longer, maybe not 10 years, but certainly enough time to give yourself a chance to try things out and try it and fail, pick yourself back up again. We're seeing more and more rarefied engineers who have had all A's their whole life. They've never put themselves in a situation where they could fail because the competition is so intense these days in college. It's really amazing. It's very expensive. And so they put a lot of effort. And so as a consequence, they're not used to failing and failure is kind of a scary proposition. Even the word has negative connotations. Yet ironically, failure is actually

a knowledge increase of an experiment and it doesn't work. That's some of the best experiments, the ones that fail. And it's about gaining knowledge and understanding of the word universe. One of my favorite pieces of life advice that I've ever received wasn't intended to be life advice. It was simply a comment in the rule book of a role playing game that I was playing. And it wasn't intended to be life experience or anything. It was just a sidebar comment in a rule book. But basically in that game, you know, it's a role playing game.

In that game, if you try something, even if you don't succeed, you get some XP in that field. Right. As a side note, it said experience is what you get when you don't get what you want. And I'm like, I like that. And that's true. Words to live by. That is excellent. My biggest

challenge is sometimes what we fail to do is experience is probably for the things that just barely work. If they work, oh, we're done. We have to start thinking about it. But if they fail, oh, we look into it and we stare at every little possibility. And so we're not good at that either. But I think you're right. It's about the stumbling along the way. That's where the journey is. I told you that there's one more thing I want to do with you, a hypothetical that I want to throw at you. Are you okay for time? I'm fine. Yeah. Thank you. Call it the rendezvous with Rama scenario, with apologies to Sir Arthur Clark.

Okay? I love that. Astronomers have detected a large object entering the solar system from parts unknown, definitely from the outside. Let's say it's a kilometer or maybe, you know, like a mile across, so big. It's assumed to be a comet right up until it changes course, decelerates, and goes into orbit between Earth and Mars. What should humanity do? Where do we go with this? Andy, I'll start with you. Okay. First off, don't let the Hawaiians name it because I can't pronounce Oumuamua. That was bullshit. I'm sorry. There are lots of Hawaiian words that are pronounceable by other people in the world.

Yeah. So that's number one. Okay. I can help you. Amua, amua, amua, amua. Just say it. Omua, amua. Omua, amua, amua.

Maki, maki, maki. Yeah. Maki, maki. Yeah. I think it's pretty obvious that the first thing we would do is send a probe to go look at it. So someone would be on the phone with Rob that day. Rob says no, but keep going. No, Rob says no.

No, Rob says no. Well, look at it with telescopes. No, no, no, no. Well, the first thing he'd do is he'd go and see about raising some money in the next fiscal year. Oh, yeah. Well, that's all Rob's stuff. No, I'm joking. The first thing that would happen is someone's on the phone with Rob saying,

so, don't know if you read about this thing that changed course and established this station keeping going. I guess I would also see what human-controlled measuring object is physically closest to it. If it's taken a station between Earth and Mars, some of the Mars satellites might be good for getting a look at it, depending on where it is in that orbit.

Like, it could be much, much closer to Mars than it is to Earth, you know. Yeah. We did that fairly recently, yeah. I loved it during Curiosity's landing. Presumably, Percy's too,

but I remember during Curiosity's landing, they used the, like... mro maybe yeah and i just remember that was cool because there was a certain window during which mro was going to be within line of sight of the of the of the landing ellipse and it was like we don't know if we're gonna find this out you know it might land and it might be after MRO has like gone beyond the horizon. So we might have to wait until another satellite. But I just think it's really cool how we'll just go like, oh, hold on. We'll reuse those satellites and redirect them and stuff.

In the Martian, of course, they pointed every satellite at. We do it and we create, that's great. We actually were able to orchestrate, we worked together with Europeans, other agencies all over the place to coordinate observations. It's really great. Of course, the nice thing about it, you know when you're going to land to the minute or less. Yeah, that helps. Years in advance. But what's just challenging is you have to kind of steal these resources. You need the Keck telescopes or the Gemini or any other spacecraft. We'll probably end up using a green bank for radar observations, bounce radar off of it, see what it might look like. My hypothetical object. Yeah. My Romo type object.

Yeah. So you'd start with just, but these just all these other observations and look at the infrared, look at the signatures, try to characterize it and have big conferences on it, sharing notes. I mean, meanwhile, people are saying, well, what are we going to do about a, probably initially be a flyby mission, right, because it's easier to get there quicker, takes a little more logistics to make a spacecraft this can actually stop and visit but i think i learned a lot from a flyby oh yeah yeah that would be awesome i get a lot of there every now and then i get you know either emails or what's even better is when i'm at events and people at you know conspiracy theorists or sometimes they're asking questions they'll ask

questions about oh you, it's pretty clear that there is life on Mars and NASA's suppressing that and all that stuff like that. And I'm like, do you have any idea what would happen to NASA's budget

if we could show that there was life on Mars? Yeah. It's like, add two zeros onto the end of it. I mean, Jesus, there is no reason

NASA would keep that quiet. I know. Exactly. So true. Yeah, so true. Not to mention you're terrible at keeping secrets, I just tell you. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's the other thing is like the complexity of faking a moon landing, it's easier just to land on the moon.

It's much easier. So neither of you guys, back to my scenario, neither of you would say if people said, no, no, this is obviously technology that's far advanced beyond us. We should just turn out all the lights and hope they go away. That's not how we roll. That's not how humans are. And it's not just me and Rob. Humanity is curious. This is one of my talking points I say a lot in when I'm giving talks is humanity is curious

and we have a desire to see what's on the other side of that hill, right? Yeah, absolutely. That is not just a quirk of the human mind. There's a lot of people, evolutionary theorists, who believe that that's a survival mechanism of humans. Just last week, John Grunsfeld, former chief scientist of NASA, five-time astronaut, he was talking about exactly the same thing, Andy, and he believes it. Yeah, it's just our desire to spread out and just go live anywhere we possibly can.

The very instinct that makes us kind of want to go live on the moon and live on Mars and stuff like that 50,000 years ago are the ones who said like, maybe we can live in that godforsaken desert. I think I found a place that has like salt water. Let's give it a whirl. And what that does is it spreads your species out over a large area. So no local ecological collapse can kill you off. In fact, it was about 75,000 years ago or something like that. There was this monumental super volcano went off and killed lots of life on earth due to an extended winter. And they think that the entire human population dwindled down to about 10,000 people during that

and then built back up. And if we hadn't been all spread out all over the world that might have been it for us yeah you know so if your entire species is in one flood plane you're you or your species might not last long so i just think it's neat that this survival instinct that maybe helped make us the dominant species on this planet is also what is driving us. You know, we have this need, this built-in psychological need. Rob, resonates? Oh, yeah, it does. I mean, I think there's still kind of an energy barrier problem in terms of, you know, going, for example, extending that to other planets.

You know, I think you're absolutely right in terms of curiosity. Let's find out. If they could do it, why can't we do it? So this really should open up all sorts of wonderful, like, huh, maybe this isn't as impossible as we thought it was in our solar system exploration. So let's find out how they did it. Let's learn.

I believe there's a lot of technological work. For example, people live comfortably on Mars. It's really hard. Even though it's kind of against the law to do this, international law, but even if they didn't have those laws, you wouldn't see people flocking to build condos down South Pole. I just tell you, it's not that friendly. There's no economic motive. There's no economic motive. And it's very difficult. It takes a lot of infrastructure support. You know, there's nothing, no trees, no, you can't start to go props.

You know, same thing with Mars. And so there needs to be something to get us over that energy barrier, you know, motivational barrier, as well as technological barrier to try to make sure that it is comfortable. As Mark Watney knew, it was kind of like, kind of like you can only go so far in potatoes my uh well my explanation for that in Artemis where they build a city on the moon is the industry was tourism yes right yeah so yeah talk earlier just about how curious we are of course we'd want to go take a look at it. I cannot imagine. There's just no scenario where people would be like, that's clear evidence of some sort of alien intelligence. Eh, forget it.

No, that's just not how we are. As for the energy thing, transportation is always the biggest problem. Like I often tell people, imagine there was just a magic gate, like two meters across that led like directly to the moon call it a stargate a stargate sure there's a stargate that leads from here to the moon or even mars let's say there's a stargate that leads from here to mars and we keep our end of it in a you know you know vacuum sealed room so that it has a mars atmosphere don't worry about the air okay so in other words it takes it takes functionally zero energy to go to Mars. I think there'd be people living there. I think honestly,

if Antarctica, what, if, if there was a gate that led directly from Cleveland to Antarctica, there'd be people living in Antarctica. It's the distance and logistical complexity of getting there that, that prevents people from wanting to live there, not just the lack of resources. Also, if you lived in Cleveland, you'd probably prefer Antarctica. It might. No. Sorry, folks. Mars and Antarctica share one thing. Unlike previous efforts for humans to migrate on the planet, they were able to find in situ resources that allow them to survive without having a logistical supply chain, right? What you're suggesting as well, a logistical supply chain through a Stargate would do the

job and that means somebody back on our end has to keep feeding these people. Well, for a while, I would argue Mars has all the in situ resources that you need. It's just harder to make use of them. Right. It has carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. If you have that, oh, and plenty of rocks to make a hole out of. Stone soup. But energy is another one that's really challenging on Mars. which is what we struggle with. Oh, well, I've always assumed that colonization would be nuclear powered because this entire city on Mars is running a little low on energy. Okay, send another five kilograms of enriched uranium. That'll last them another 20 years.

And we're getting there. I mean, that's something that we may just see, nuclear power again in space before long. that's something that we may just see nuclear power again in space before long. You have been amazingly generous with both your time and your creativity. I'm going to throw just one more at you that didn't occur to me until just like moments before we started this thing. And what makes me really want to bring it up now, Rob, is that you talked about our existence as physical beings that's the phrase you used about an hour ago so what if this best of all universes is a simulation uh what if we're just zeros and ones in in some vast cosmic uh computer or mind um you know i like the response from coach beard in ted lasso which you may have caught in the episode that focused on Coach Beard. He said,

if this is all indeed a simulation, which everything in my experience suggests that it is, then all we can do is tip our caps to the rascal pulling the strings. I'd only add, thanks for the ride. Rob? I have this middle ground view. People say if you're living a simulation that obviously there is some person who created the simulation who wrote the, you know, like Andy Weir, right? No, like, wrote all the software. And who are watching the simulation

progress. But it's possible that we are actually, are bits, you know, quantum bits, qubits. I think it's quite possible that we are, we talk about an information theoretic view of the reality. It from bit, you've heard thatbits. I think it's quite possible that we talk about an information theoretic view of the reality, it from bit. You've heard that expression. I do believe that one hypothesis for different universe is that this information resides on a hologram of our universe. So I think,

I don't know, we don't think that's necessarily true for our expanding universe, but the ideas are, I think, are correct in the sense I do think that we are, what we see in the world around us is some sense constructed from bits of information that are interacting with each other in a different place. Now, is that a simulation? No, it's a duality. It's that our universe lives in a different way. But there's a lot of doubt.

I think we are bits of information and we build up. My mind is blown. Andy, are we all just characters in your next story? Well, definitely not my next story. But I've never been that excited about the whole, you know, are we living in a simulation argument? Because to me, it becomes irrelevant. It becomes

really more a matter of religion. It's like, okay, we are living, we exist in a system that has a set of laws and rules that we have no choice but to follow. Physics. Is it a simulation of physics? Is it something like that? Is there another universe outside of ours that has completely different physics and we are running in some form of a computer within there? It doesn't matter because we are confined to this one. These are the rules we have to play by. If you're playing chess, you don't get to bring in a checker. You know, it's like these are the rules that we live by. And if there is indeed some way to, quote unquote, escape the simulation, then that's still the rules that we live by. Then maybe there's a leak, a memory leak or something like that. But in the end, it doesn't matter. It means that if we're in a simulation, all that means is that some entity created our reality. And that is what people call God. This is not a new concept.

It's like, hey, what if the universe isn't just random, but it was indeed created by some higher power who is watching? Yeah. So the whole simulation thing, it's like people are just starting to invent religion. Try to catch up. This is like, you know, 100,000 years old, folks. Humans tend to just repeat ourselves a lot. And so I think the whole, ooh, are we living in a simulation,

is just a new way for people to invent religion without admitting it. Gentlemen, simulation or not, I am thrilled to share this universe with the two of you. Thank you so much for being, as far as I know, the last two external guests that may appear while I am the host of Planetary Radio. But I sure hope it's not the last conversation that we get to share. It has just been delightful. Thank you very much. I don't know. Do you want to say goodbye to each other? I'm sure I'll see Rob again sometime. But goodbye for now, Rob. Good to see you, Andy. Really? Do you want to say goodbye to each other? I'm sure I'll see Rob again sometime, but goodbye for now, Rob.

Good to see you, Andy. Really? I just want to say, Matt, goodbye to you in this role. You've been just fantastic. I love your show. I've bet on it more times than I can count, and I've always had a fantastic time. I'm going to say the same thing. Yeah. It sounds like something you'd say to a military man, but thank you for your service. Oh, man. It's true. I mean, you really have performed a major, I mean, this is,

what's important about what you do is that, I mean, you've done over the years is that you bring, you inspire people with our reality of our world and our universe. And I think that's something that is something that we often feel, I feel short of because people are often living in a kind of a quasi world of their own. And I think that, I think getting out there and looking and seeing the universe is looking at and seeing how we relate to it is what you're good at and what you're best at and what you've done so successful. You're a great communicator, Matt, and what you do is important and you've done a lot of good for the world. I know you're not used to having the microphone turned around and pointed at you, but it's worth saying after 20 years, maybe someone ought to mention this to you.

All right. Well, listen, you two. Takes one to know one. Thank you. Thank you so much, guys. Take care. What a treat. Thank you so much. See you both. Hey, guess what? It's time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. The chief scientist of the Planetary Society is here with us again, Dr. Bruce Betts. I have your gift.

Here it is, a white styrofoam box, non-recyclable box. Is there dry ice involved? No, no, no dry ice required. You can use it for dry ice if you like later, but I've already said too much. You'll have to stick around to the end. This time I will. And the sooner you tell us about the night sky, well... Oh yeah, there are all sorts of planets in the evening sky. There's the party we've been having with Mars rising in the east a little. It'll already be up now around sunset in the east looking bright red, but dimming as it gets farther away from Earth. And then Jupiter high in the sky looking very, very bright. Saturn moving over towards the west as the weeks go on looking yellowish. In a surprise guest

appearance, we'll have Mercury through the end of the month. You're going to need a low view to the western horizon right shortly after sunset. And get excited because Venus is coming up underneath it in even clearer view to the horizon to pick it up so far. It's super bright below Mercury, and Mercury will go away. Venus will join us for the next few months. Stay tuned for more Mercury fun. Mercury mirth. Mirthery.

This week in space history, big week, 60 years ago, Mariner 2 became the first planet flyby, successful planet flyby, when it flew by Venus. Ten years later, Gene Cernan was taken the last steps on the moon by a human. I mean, I'm not counting Wallace and Gromit because it's different. Jeez. Gromit. Bensley Dale.

All right. You ready? Go. Random Matt Kaplan fact. That was unexpected. I ask forgiveness from the public. We've got three episodes left, Matt, with you as host guy. And so I'm introducing random Matt Kaplan Fact as a replacement segment for the

next three weeks. Matt Kaplan's radio broadcasting career began in elementary school when his parents gave him a Remco AM radio transmitter as a kid. He could broadcast all of 50 feet. The world would never be the same. My poor brothers who were forced to be the audience. Well, I love it. Thank you. Oh, you're welcome. Wait till we get to next week and the week after. Let us move on to the trivia contest, shall we?

Because that gets me one step closer to my glorious gift. As of Planetary Radio's 20th birthday, which occurred just a couple weeks ago, about how old would Planetary Radio be in Mercury years? How'd we do, Matt? I will simply let our poet laureate, Dave Fairchild, in Kansas, respond. I think he'll like this. We've dialed in so long ago to Planetary Radio, where all have heard young Matt give word and Bruce with random facts absurd. I tell you, sir, we all concur that you're our spatial messenger. Get it? Messenger? Messenger.

And 83 is what you'd be if you had lived on Mercury. Indeed, 83 years young. Thank you, Dave. Another great job. Here's our winner, Rhys Naylor, first-time winner in Ontario, Canada. Yep, just about to turn 83. He adds, congratulations, Matt, on a fantastic run. Thank you for all your work. You are very welcome, Reese, and we are going to send you a Planetary Society kick asteroid. Rubber asteroid. I like that. Patrick Luski in California said, you know, 83 is the new 20. You look great. Jerry Robinette in Ohio is just one of those who shared that out at Pluto, 20 Earth years is a toddling 0.08 years. He says, I guess it's true what they say. Location, location, location.

Patricia Bennett in Australia, her very first entry, and she gave us some verse. At 88 days, it's spinning around with 1,000 episodes. It's 20 years bound. But if I were a Mercurian, I'd be 83. Maybe as old as Matt. Hee hee. Okay, first and last, maybe, Patricia. But no, I'm very entertained.

Thank you. Yes, the next trivia contest will involve Matt's age. Go ahead, Matt. A somewhat longer poem, but we'll go ahead and do it all from Gene Lewin in Washington. Comparing solar orbits, a ratio can be extracted between Earth and planet Mercury. A similitude is exacted, solely measuring it in years 20 here, there 83. But if we consider the amount of days, I wonder what that would be. Each Earth year has 365. Four leap years add four days more. Multiply by 20 and you get 7,304. But Mercury on its axis spins less than two days in its year. So 83 orbits round the sun. 124.5, my dear. Wow. That is quite a piece of work. How about for this time? I realized something, Matt. This trivia question will be

answered during your final show as host. That's very true. So I'm going to break all the rules and ask, oh gosh, I wish I had a good joke right now. To the audience out there, what has Matt Kaplan meant to you? Oh no, it'll be great. You'll be really uncomfortable. You'll be embarrassed. Yes. I've been getting that for months, ever since we made the announcement.

People have been sharing these beautiful, beautiful thoughts. 20 years and now you're rejecting my question? I should have brought Sarah in on this so we could grab the emails. All right, how about, oh, here, how about this? Matt's retiring as Planetary Radio host. I think that means I will never talk to him again, but I'm not sure, but that's a separate issue.

So now we're changing. The official question is as follows. After Matt retires as Planetary Radio host, what job would you like him to do? What do you envision him doing? I like that. It can be serious. It can be funny. It can be...

Profound. Profound. Yeah, or just not profound. So something I would write. Okay, good. We have reached that point. Here's the box making noise. I can see it on my little video.

I'm going to open it up. There we are. Okay. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. It is a coffee mug, and I'll hold it up to the camera. A planetary radio emblazoned coffee mug. Oh yes, but wait, there's more

No way Oh my gosh, there's a picture of Matt and Bruce recording at the beach Yay! That's so cool Thank you, Matt Isn't it nice? It really, it just jumped out When I needed to pick a photo, I'd forgotten all about this But we were on Coronado Beach recording What's Up It's just a great photo.

Oh, that's cool. Thank you. And thank you, everyone, for going along on our memory-filled journey over this time period. It's a little less space and a little more, well, Matt Kaplan. Ew. Sounds gross when I say it out loud. Say goodnight, Bruce. Goodnight, Bruce.

We've only done that like 100 times over the past 20 years. That's less than 10% at the shows, because we've really done, I think, 1,106 shows. Of course, that includes Space Policy Edition monthly programs. But yeah, we're well over a thousand. All right, everybody, go out there, look out for the night sky, and think about the squirrel outside my window that's eating a nut. Thank you, and goodnight. It's very cute.

That was the chief scientist of the Planetary Society, Bruce Betts, who is now taking a photo of the squirrel eating a nut outside his window so that he can remember this moment with the squirrel forever. He joins us every week here on What's Up. Want to see Bruce's truly cute squirrel? It's on the episode page at planetary.org slash radio. Next week, the best of Planetary Radio, which is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California,

and is made possible by our Space Nut members, crack their secret at planetary.org slash join. Mark Hilverda and Ray Paletta are our associate producers. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which is arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. Ad Astra.