Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Planetary Radio Live at the USA Science and Engineering Festival with Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs

Episode Date: April 29, 2014

Join us at the world’s biggest public science event in Washington DC, where we talk about dirty jobs in space with television’s terrific Mike Rowe.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi podcast listeners, a very special show today, one that I barely had time to edit when I returned from the amazing USA Science and Engineering Festival. That's where Bill Nye, Emily Lakdawalla, and I were joined on stage by Mike Rowe of the hit TV show Dirty Jobs, and Ray Johnson, co-founder of the festival, and the chief technology officer for Lockheed Martin. You may think at first that this episode is not about exploring space. Ah, but it very much is. And you might want to stick around for the chance to win a Celestron telescope in the What's Up Space Trivia Contest. Here we go.

Going up the spectrum, repeat after me. Radio, infrared, visible, UV, keep going all the way. And what do you see? That's X-rays, gamma rays, high energy. Planetary Radio Live is live at the USA Science and Engineering Festival. Welcome to the travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society, and I'm thrilled to be at the world's biggest celebration of science, technology, engineering,

and yes, even mathematics. We'll hear from them. Excuse me, that's the chromatics you're hearing in the background right now. We're going to hear more from them in a few minutes. They'll be back on stage. This weekend, about a quarter of a million people are dropping by the Washington Convention Center in the capital of the United States. They're visiting more than 1,000 exhibitors, including lots of Fortune 500 companies,

nonprofits like ours, the Planetary Society, universities and government agencies like NASA. And they are being entertained, informed, and amazed by scores of performers, including someone who is on the Einstein stage with me right now. Please welcome my boss, the CEO of the Planetary Society, Bill Nye the Science Guy. Thank you, Matt. Thank you. It's so good to be here. Greetings, everyone. Bill, another Science and Engineering Festival presenter is here with us. Ladies and gentlemen, science geeks young and old, here is the Planetary Society's senior editor and planetary evangelist, Emily Lakdawalla.

Thank you very much, Matt. It's a pleasure to be here in front of all of these excited people. Later today, we're going to check in, we hope, with Dr. Bruce Betts. He's the Planetary Society's Director of Projects. That'll be for our regular What's Up segment. And we will be giving away some great prizes from Celestron, the maker of telescopes and other fine optics. Emily, you and Bill are also part of the show every week. We look to you for updates on some of the most exciting events in planetary science.

Emily, tell us, what's the latest? You have a quick report for us. Yeah, I do. I decided I would like to tell the crowd about what's going on with the Curiosity mission to Mars. Now, Curiosity has been on Mars for almost two years now. It's been roving and roving across the landscape, driving actually for almost 300 days since the last time they drilled a rock. And Curiosity is on Mars to drill rocks. So what we have here is a 360-degree panorama of images taken by Curiosity of the place that Curiosity drove up to this week.

So this is brand new, fresh images from Mars. For those of you watching on the radio, it is cool looking. Curiosity is leaving behind really gorgeous tracks in the landscape and has recently pulled up to a really cool looking rock outcrop, the place that they finally decided to drill. So this is a wide panoramic view of that outcrop. And now they've recently pulled up quite close to the outcrop and you can see a rock right in the center that they have chosen to drill.

What do we anticipate would hold it together other than ancient water? Well, water doesn't actually do a very good job of holding things together. But it makes it settle? It's the stuff that water carries in it. Now, when we think of water, water coming out of our taps doesn't have much in it. But water flowing through rocks and across the landscape has a lot of dissolved minerals inside it, things like salts. And salts can bind those rocks together. And so we expect to find some kind of salty material, some kind of clay material perhaps, something made of ions and anions

that's gluing together these little sand grains. Calcium chloride and sodium chloride. Or magnesium perhaps. Magnesium chloride. In fact, it may even be an iron-rich salt that they're looking for. You can see on the screen now some activity of the arm investigating these rocks, just making sure that they're the right kind of rocks to drill into. And this is a picture taken with a microscopic imager at the end of the arm of that flat spot,

and they just brushed it yesterday with a brushing tool on the end of the robotic arm and notice what that rock is covered with why is mars red because all of mars is covered with this horrible fine red powdery dust and they we had to take a brush to mars to wipe it away and be able to actually see the martians probably like it you think well i don't you know what when that dust flies around in dust devils, it actually, the dust particles rub up against each other. They create triboelectricity. That's

static electricity. You and me, it can shock everything. Electricity from friction. That's right. It can even turn some of the molecules in Mars' air into such wonderful chemicals as hydrogen peroxide, which has a nasty tendency to oxidize and break up organic molecules and make things really bad for any

life that would want to be living on the surface. I thought that I would tell you one more thing about these pictures, which is how you guys out there can follow the adventures of this rover all the time in real time as those things are happening on Mars. Now, the rover is equipped with a total of 17 cameras. You can see two pairs on the ends here, one pair in the middle and another one on top for seven of the cameras up on top of this rover. And each of those cameras is used for a different purpose. So I just have a little graphic here that shows you how the different cameras vary in

terms of how much of the Martian landscape they can see. The black and white pictures are taken by the nav cams. Nav cams are for navigation. They allow the rover to get a really quick pic of what's happening 360 degrees around it, whereas those square ones, the mast cams, are the ones that see in color and in beautiful detail. They scope things out with the nav cam. They pick where they want to see it with the mast cam. And the places where I go to download these pictures all the time, my favorite website is one called midnightplanets.com. Do go check that out. You can see everything that the rover has taken a picture of yesterday. You can check it out right now to see all the great images.

Other cool missions that are sending pictures to the Internet almost as soon as they get to Earth are the Opportunity Rover on Mars as well as the Cassini Saturn orbiter. So you can get those pictures at midnightplanets.com, at saturn.jpl.nasa.gov, or just by coming to my blog at planetary.org slash blog, and I post all kinds of these beautiful pictures all the time to show you all the great adventures that these robots are having across the solar system. She does. They are stunning pictures. Stunning.

I highly recommend that last option. Take a look. Emily, thank you very much. You're welcome. She and Bill are going to stick around, but we're going to welcome a couple of other special guests that will join us in just a moment. First, though, I want to bring back our live musical guests. They have been entertaining visitors here at the Science and Engineering Festival with their songs of science. They've got

a complete one of those for us right now. So please give a big Science Geek welcome to the Chromatics. Susan cruising down the freeway doing 78 She just likes to drive fast, it's not that she's late Goes over a hilltop, what a surprise Blue and red flashing lights right in front of her eyes Oh no! I'm gonna get a ticket now

Now Susan's standing by the side of her car Show me your license, you're in big trouble Truck's blowing right by her, but she's not going far They're still cruising, Susan's amazing She's been caught by a speed trap and now she can hear. Here comes the physics, you're in for it now. Sound of the Doppler shift right in her ear. Eee-yah.

That's the Doppler shift. You've heard it, I know. Doppler shift. First it's high, then it's low. The good cop's gun shoots out only radar And the beam bounces back off at Susan's car And assuming a policeman is standing in range His gun tells him all about the frequency change

And Susan's walking, walking Her speed racing days are done All right, Deb, now let's talk about space and astronomy I'll get to that They're light years away, man, now let's talk about space and astronomy. I'll get to that. There are light years away, man, and that's pretty far. Lights beat the limit, the big speed limit. But there's plenty we can learn from the light of the star.

Slated with a prism, there's little lines in it. By looking at the spectrum of the light that's glowing. Thanks to ambition, measured with precision. The Doppler shift will tell us if it's coming or going That's the Doppler shift You see it, it's true Doppler shift When a star is approaching

and it's coming our way Its spectrum seems bluer, won't you hear what I say When a star's retreating way out of range, and the scientist measures his frequency change, well that's a red ship, red ship, if the star is moving away. Ah, Deb, you took us to the

stars, now take us to the galaxy. And beyond! By reading up the ships of all we see in the sky, clusters of galaxies near and far, we get the big picture and a big surprise. Red ships going, red ships going. The universe is growing and expanding away.

The galaxies are speeding away. But maybe gravity will shrink it back someday. We Doppler shift to the red or the blue Doppler shift And our shifts overdue Now blue shifts come And red shifts go And that's pretty much everything you need to know

Now we're gonna pick up Susan And give her a ride So you guys remember Doppler And your drive to survive And now we're shift, shift, shift And the Doppler song is done. The Chromatics. Thanks, guys.

That's cool, you guys. That's pretty cool. I love it. Acapella, Doppler shift. Of course it is. So they're going to be back in a few minutes. You can learn more about them, by the way, at thechromatics.com, not surprising.

We're at the USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, D.C. with Bill Nye, the science guy, and Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society. Bill, you're an engineer by training. Emily, you're a scientist. The guy that I'm going to bring up next has worked with a lot of scientists and engineers. Some of them have pretty dirty jobs, but he's probably spent a heck of a lot more time with people who do the very dirtiest and most difficult and yet some of the most fascinating jobs on this planet. Creating and hosting dirty jobs has inspired him to create a new organization that is helping men and women move into the millions of technical and skilled positions that this country absolutely

must fill if it wants to remain a world leader. He's also just written a book, by the way, called Profoundly Disconnected, and we might bring that up as well. Please help me welcome Mike Rowe. Hello, Max. Mike, right here. Oh, hello. Hello. Good to see you. Either one. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. I got to tell you, on the plane to D.C., I did a double take. So I'm on one of the planes with the, you know, DirecTV. Yeah. And I'm scanning, I'm channel surfing. Uh-huh. All of a sudden, there's this guy in front of me, and he's doing really disgusting things to turkeys. Upside down turkeys. That was me. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm not ready to talk about that one yet. Which was worse, the boys or the girl turkeys? The boys are probably a little more robust, you know, because of the way the turkey industry works now. There's so much food and growth in such a short period of time, their chests are so large that they can't mate, right? And so this is why the turkeys need a little help from their friends. So you're causing a genetic interaction. I like to think of it, Bill, in terms of I had a hand in the process. Deeply in. The point is that if these guys weren't doing that work,

we would have a very different Thanksgiving dinner. Yeah, absolutely. Look, no one thinks of dirty jobs, if you're playing word association, things like cloning and genetic research and all these things typically don't occur to people. But what we saw in the show over eight seasons, 10 years, 50 states and 300 different jobs, there wasn't one single trip that I can think of that didn't involve STEM to one degree or another. So it's a bit of a disconnect in most people's minds because I was looking at the world of work through the lens of skill and a willingness to get dirty. But it's two sides of the same coin.

You know, in fact, wherever you find science, technology, engineering, and math, if you just flip it over, look just beneath it, you'll find skill. If you don't, well, you'll find nothing. This has changed your life, I'm sure, in many ways, but it has led you, it has inspired you to create this organization that is working in exactly this area. Yeah, well, what happened was in 2008, Dirty Jobs was at the height of its popularity. And we were all over the world. And then the economy went sideways. And suddenly, people started asking me questions about the headlines.

So a skills gap and offshore manufacturing and a crumbling infrastructure and currency devaluation and all these things that I'm really not qualified to talk about, I'm suddenly being asked about because I'm in the space. And so what I noticed on the show, really more than anything, at the height of the recession, no matter where I went, I saw help wanted signs. And something was odd. There was this big national conversation about unemployment, but on dirty jobs, there was a hiring crisis. And so I started to look at the industries that were most impacted by the challenge of technical recruitment, and I thought it would be good to build a database

of apprenticeship programs and on-the-job training opportunities, all the things we call alternative education today. And fans of the show sent in thousands of links to places like this. We put them online. We called it MicroWorks. And then it turned into a forum. And then it turned into a foundation. And now we award work ethic scholarships specifically to kids who are interested in learning a useful skill and applying it in a way that, quite frankly, a lot of people aren't willing to do today. These are you talking about machinists? I'm talking about machinists. I'm talking about plumbers, steam fitters, pipe fitters.

Roustabouts are way up on the list. But welders are probably near the top. You know, there was an article in the Wall Street Journal just last week that talked about a company in Ohio. They have 58 welders making $150,000 a year. They've got a couple making $200,000 a year. These are very skilled guys. People who understand the material, understand the process, and are willing to take the time

to learn to be good at it. Exactly. And when you talk about welding typically, the image that comes up in your mind is some anonymous guy with the mask over his face bathed in sparks. The truth is... Which is cool. Which is very cool. But A, there are also a lot of women out there welding.

In fact, women are awfully good at some of the more... When I worked in the shipyard, there were certain little places that only the people with small hands could get to. Exactly. I remember that very well. No, it's a big deal. And, you know, it's just the whole notion that you don't associate metallurgy or chemistry with welding, but those things are integral to it. Well, I do.

Well, you do. Of course you're a science guy. Emily and I visited an aerospace company, and we saw women stitching. But what they were stitching is stuff that's going to go on the James Webb Space Telescope, the follow-up to the Hubble Space Telescope. Right. But they were really good at what they did, and they were really proud of it.

You ran into a lot of people who, they didn't all love their jobs. That's right. But many of them did. Well, the people I ran into, by and large, loved their work, but they didn't wind up in their career because they followed their passion. They wound up in their careers because they took their passion with them. Again and again and again, the people I met on Dirty Jobs, and one of the big lessons from the show is that if you take the reverse commute, I'm thinking of a guy named Les Swanson I met in Wisconsin, who's a septic tank technician.

And I asked him at one point when we were literally up to our chest and the most unthinkable stuff there was, it's like, Les, you know, what did you do before this? He said, I was a psychologist. And I swear, I said, well, that's crazy. I said, well, what brought you here? And without missing a beat, he said, I got tired of dealing with other people's crap. And I mean, you have to laugh. But the truth is, he's happier than he's ever been. He's got a few employees. He has a thriving business. And he took a reverse commute.

He looked around and said, where's everybody going? I'm going the other way. And then he found a way to be really good at what he did. And then he found a way to love it. He looked around and said, where's everybody going? I'm going the other way. And then he found a way to be really good at what he did, and then he found a way to love it. That's a big lesson. Yeah. You got a lot of fans here.

There is another one that I want to bring up on stage. I did a bunch of interviews with terrific people at the last festival, the last USA Science and Engineering Festival. One of the most interesting was the guy that we're going to bring on next. Dr. Ray Johnson is the Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Lockheed Martin, which is the founding sponsor and presenting host of this festival. Yeah, they absolutely deserve that. Ray leads the corporation's engineering, technology,

production, and supply chain operations. They give jobs to a lot of the kinds of guys and girls who do the kind of work Mike is talking about. It's about 72,000 people that he has under him. That's a little more than half of the Lockheed Martin Corporation. Then there are the thousands of smaller companies, the subcontractors, Then there are the thousands of smaller companies, the subcontractors, the ones that Lockheed Martin hires to create the little components that Lockheed Martin then has to integrate to create those 4,000 projects that they're working on. Ray also chairs the solar system and beyond. Please welcome to the Einstein stage, Ray Johnson.

Great to see you. Come on in. I bet you love the stuff you've just heard from Mike. Absolutely. Absolutely. First of all, ladies and gentlemen on the radio and here in the auditorium, welcome to the Super Bowl of STEM. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's great to be between these two gentlemen

because Bill represents science and he represents space and he represents the next frontier and very important thing. And Mike represents another really important thing, and that is skilled labor and dirty jobs. And I think we sometimes lose sight of the fact that the two are going to come together. And the two are going to come together in a way that's very interesting. The United States competitiveness is going to be important. Our continued competitiveness is going to be enabled by this coming together. And what's happening is new technologies in material science and in manufacturing and in energy independence for the United States are going to enable jobs,

job creation to support space in our corporation. In fact, we have a number of people working on advanced materials and on advanced manufacturing as applied to space, opening up new opportunities for skilled labor. Emily, you've got a question? Well, I just want to remark that I've noticed working inside Mars mission operations how closely together science and engineering are working all the time to make all the little decisions to keep the rover safe while still doing science on another planet. The two have to work hand-in-hand absolutely constantly.

One thing that always strikes me when I see pictures that are taken of the rover sitting on another planet are all the hand-tied knots holding every single cable bundle together. And I think to myself about how we have the most advanced technology. You think about computers and robots and things operating without human hands. And then you see Earth's oldest tech. I would argue that's likely one of the oldest technologies we have is not tying. And it's all over the rover and every other spacecraft that's in space right now. If you want it to fit together, you just can't beat hand wiring.

The wire looms. When I worked at Sunstrand, if you could get Francis to do it, that was the best. And it makes you realize that there was a person, many people, who lovingly tied each one of those knots and torqued it to the correct tightness. It's a hand-crafted thing that people made and sent to another planet.

So these people have an intuition about the material. They've handled it enough to know, they'll know more about it than anybody, really. Here's what I love, Emily. Everything you just said, almost word for word, could be applied to a crab boat on the Bering Sea, right? I work on a show called Deadliest Catch. And what you just said, the captain of a crab boat would absolutely agree with. It's not about the GPS. It's not about the sonar. It's not about the efficacy of the craft. It's about the ability to make sure the bowline

on a bite does what it's supposed to do. And the sheep shank and the fisherman's knot, it doesn't matter. You can go all the way to the moon. But unless you understand fundamentally how that's working at a fundamental level, forget it. We're not getting off the launch pad. That's my new hero, Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs and Mike Rowe Works. Mike and Ray Johnson of Lockheed Martin have more to say to Bill Nye, Emily Lakdawalla, and me when Planetary Radio continues in a minute. Hey, hey, Bill Nye here, CEO of the Planetary Society, speaking to you from PlanetFest

2012, the celebration of the Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity landing on the surface of Mars. This is taking us our next steps in following the water in the search for life, to understand those two deep questions. Where did we come from? And are we alone? This is the most exciting thing that people do. And together, we can advocate for planetary science and, dare I say it, change the worlds. Your name carried to an asteroid. How cool is that? You, your family, your friends, your cat, we're inviting everyone to travel along on NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid Bennu. All the details are at planetary.org slash B-E-N-N-U.

You can submit your name and then print your beautiful certificate. That's planetary.org slash Bennu. Planetary Society members, your name is already on the list. The Planetary Society, we're your place in space. Welcome back to Planetary Radio Live at the USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, D.C. We're your place in space. jobs and Lockheed Martin's chief technology officer, Ray Johnson. Want to see some great photos of these amazing people? We've got a couple on the show page at planetary.org slash radio and a link to the complete album on the Planetary Society's Flickr page. Our conversation about space jobs for people who don't happen to be scientists or engineers

continued with this question for Mike Rowe. You reworked a motto. You saw a poster you didn't like, and you rewrote that. Do you know the one I'm talking about? Well, some of you kids may have, I mean, everybody in the room has heard the expression, work smart, not hard, you know, and it's typically now applied to... Work smart, not hard? Work smart, not hard. That's not his motto. It's not my motto. That's horrible. People have been saying it for years. And the first time I saw it, I was 17 years old, sitting in my guidance counselor's office. And he wanted to encourage me to pursue a four-year degree.

And I was very much interested in doing it. I just didn't have any money, and I didn't know what I wanted to study. So I wanted to go to a two-year school first. And he said, no, that's a bad idea. It's beneath your potential. And he pointed to a poster. It was a true story. It was over his shoulder. And it was a picture of a college grad in cap and gown looking very optimistic toward the future next to a mechanic holding a wrench, looking sad and kind of beaten down. And the caption said, work smart, not hard. And that was the first PR campaign for higher education that I had ever seen. Now, the problem was, it was the beginning of a trend that promoted one form of education

at the expense of all the others. Because the portrayals of work that we have in pop culture, the portrayals we have in books, they're very, very predictable. Studies show all plumbers are 350 pounds with a giant butt crack, right? They're not. They're not. And over time, you know, it's true. I mean, when we think about work, we immediately default to the stereotypes and the stigmas that we're encouraged to embrace. So I changed that poster to say work smart and hard, which makes a bit more sense. It sure does. And I changed the images to reflect something that was a bit more logical.

And now those posters are hanging in a few hundred schools around the country. But it's one small way, Matt, to kind of challenge the idea that one path is the best way for the most people. So I have a question. I come from a science background. I went to graduate school with other people who, the path when you're in graduate school, there's a single path. That path is to become a professor, an academic at an institution. There are not very many of those jobs. And to be honest, they're not very well-paying jobs. And I'm hearing, I hear all the time that there's a lot of need for intelligent people with skills to do more work in science and technology fields.

How do people who are inside colleges and graduate schools find out about the range of possible things they can do to contribute to exploring space, to solving problems on Earth? How do people find out about all that? Great. Ray? Yeah, I think there are a number of organizations who are making the connections and also going to companies and websites and learning more about it. And actually, events like this, which really, I think...

Which you happen to organize. Which we supported and co-founded. The neat thing about this is, and I think it's a little bit to your point, and it's also to Mike's goals. I think when people think about STEM, science, technology, engineering, and math, they think about the hard things. They think about calculus. They think about physics and all those classes.

And I don't know if I'm prepared. And maybe they've been told they're not good at math. When, in fact, it's events like this, the 3,000 or 4,000 hands-on demonstrations downstairs that ignites the spark and gets them interested. And that carries through their education into graduate school or not. I'd also like to make a comment about junior colleges. into graduate school or not. I'd also like to make a comment about junior colleges.

I think because of this knowledge worker theme that was so prevalent for many years, it became not a good thing, not a good image to go to a junior college unless you were going to junior college to prepare for a four-year school. And I think we need to change that because we're going to need, STEM doesn't mean everybody has a graduate degree.

STEM means science, technology, engineering, math at any level. And it needs to be inclusive. And we need to bring in a more diverse group. If we don't do that, we will not stay competitive as a nation. The other thing that diversity sponsors and supports is innovation. The more diverse, not just race, creed, and color, but background, ideas, experiences. By bringing in those different experiences, that's what supports innovation. I'm going to come back to that, Ray. But I also want to ask you, I know you need engineers at Lockheed Martin, the whole industry does. How badly do you need the kind of people that micro, micro works, are trying to steer in your direction, these skilled

technicians? We need both. We have major programs like the F-35 that has hundreds of people in the assembly process, thousands of people in the supply chain. We're going to probably build 4,000 of these jets or 4,500 of these jets over the lifetime of the program. That creates a tremendous need for those skilled workers. There's another tricky little thing that happens with the language. And when you start to look for it, you'll see it everywhere. But you just said it. Innovation, obviously, is hugely key. And every great company in the country right now sees themselves

and wants to make sure they're positioned as innovators. But when's the last time you heard of a company branding themselves as imitators? Nobody says that. But if you think about the genius of imitation, like that F-35, it's pretty incredible. But unless you're only going to do one, which I guess would be a prototype of sorts, right? So we've got to figure, celebrating mass assembly is not a sexy thing to say. I think it's cool. I mean, Henry Ford figured it out, right?

It's not a Model T for me. It's a Model T for everybody. Mike, I think the exciting thing is that we are bringing innovation into that production process, and you can be just as innovative and probably more importantly innovative there as you can in the design phase up front. Absolutely. I'm just saying

from a PR standpoint, because when you really talk about the portrayals of work, you kind of have to look at the stuff you value. I'm looking out in the audience right now and I can count eight different pocket devices, PDAs right now. All right. I mean, everybody's got one. That is a tribute to innovation, but it's also surely a tribute to the fact that they were able to make a couple billion of them. They're all over the world now. to the fact that they were able to make a couple billion of them.

They're all over the world now. Those are two sides of the same coin. They're equally valuable. That's a big part of it. Well, what do we value in a sports person? Somebody's a good athlete. Somebody can do it over and over. That's right. Somebody can come in day in and day out and hit the ball or catch the ball.

Maybe a little bit better each day. If you are in manufacturing and you're making F-35 fighter planes and only sort of one in seven is screwed up, I don't want to be in that seventh plane, do I? I mean, so that be able to be consistent, that really is a lot of it. When you're talking about skills, being able to do the same thing over and over is something that, you know, like, and I'm sure a few of you have taken craft classes, you made some pottery, and one of them came out pretty well, right? The other ones didn't. But the person who's going to make money at it, the person who's going to

actually come up with new ways or better ways to do it is the person that can do it, can throw the pot over and over. I see your point earlier that skill in doing that is a combination of the assembly line process, which is a repetitive process, but also that tacit knowledge that the workers, that real deep understanding that workers achieve over time. Ray, isn't the nature of these skilled positions also changing when you're looking for people with new kinds of skills. I'm thinking of this revolution that is in the making in particular with so-called 3D printing.

Is that affecting stuff at your level? Absolutely. In fact, we are using additive manufacturing. We have a display downstairs in a Lockheed Martin booth demonstrating this. We're using additive manufacturing to make titanium components on our spacecraft that replace the machined process, and it allows you to make much more complex shapes and do it in a very repetitive way. See, if you think about it, most of the pieces that you have in the world are made by removing material.

You start with a block, and you cut it away, you cut it away, and you get a shape. But this way, you add material. You can make things that are literally impossible to machine. Exactly. Impossible to cut. It's cool. It changes the design process because today when a designer thinks about designing something, they're bounded by the manufacturing capability. It opens up totally new design possibilities.

So you're looking for people with entirely new skills, people who are going to be able to provide the operators of these machines. You have to literally think differently. And they're going to be in new environments. You know, I mentioned roustabouts earlier. Everybody remembers Bruce Willis in Armageddon, right? Right. So they needed a roustabout and his buddies to go up and blow up the big asteroid. A roustabout's a guy in the oil field, a person in the oil field. Handles the plumbing of an oil field. Bad idea. Don't try this to save your home planet, going out

and nuking it with guys who usually drill for oil. But we've got companies that are preparing to mine asteroids. We've got at least one organization, whether they have a real shot or not, that wants to put colonists on Mars. Do you have any doubt, gentlemen, that they're not all going to be scientists and engineers up there?

They're going to need some people doing the kind of work. There might even be people doing things with turkeys on Mars someday, Mike. Hey, I checked the classifieds this morning after talking with a few astronauts yesterday. There's no opening for astronauts, right? They're not there. There are openings for other things. But to your point, there's an absolute straight line to Mars. And I think if you sort of re-engineer it, in my own opinion, you can go right back to shop class in high school,

which is why we've got to get shop class back in high school. You can't get to Mars without doing it. It's not going to happen. Ray, are we going to see those kinds of tech jobs, oh, I don't know, on Mars? Absolutely. You definitely are. And you're going to see them on an asteroid even before that, no question. I wanted to do one thing. You know, my co-founder, Larry Bach, always has a great phrase, and he says, we get the things we celebrate. And we could

not have two bigger celebrities than the people who are with me here. So I want to do just one thing. It'll take two minutes. I want to take a selfie with the audience in the background. And if you will raise your hands, we'll see if we can challenge Ellen for the most retweeted picture. Okay, while we set up this selfie, I don't know if you can beat Bill's selfie with the president and Neil deGrasse Tyson. They're of a piece. They're not independent. You need them all. So folks here in the audience, while they get this ready, or maybe we'll wait until right after.

That's fine. We're going to open this up to you guys. Anybody who has a question for any of our terrific panelists up here today, now's the time to raise your hand, and we'll finish up this segment with this. Hi, what's your name, sir? Chris. What's your question, Chris? Will you accept this cupcake?

Do we have to split it five ways? Oh. Or is it just for Bill? It's just for Bill. Well, okay. Sure. If I may, can I go get the cupcake and bring it to you? I can help.

That is so nice of you, Mike. Thank you so much. Wow. Don't fall. He's a skilled guy, but the next time he jumps off the stage, he won't trip like that. Right this way. Thank you for the cupcake. There he is.

There we go. Yes. It has a letter in it. L? What does the L stand for? Whoever iced this cupcake, Mike, was very skilled. That's very skilled. Very skilled, right there. I'm not sure our friend has mastered the concept of the microphone.

I think so, right. It's right there toward the mouth area. It's my friend Luke's birthday. Oh, Luke. Happy birthday, Luke. Happy birthday, Luke. We sing to you, but we don't have time. Okay, let me have that back. Thank you for coming up.

Careful. As we say at the Planetary Society, it's not just happy birthday. It's happy orbit of the sun. Who's got a question? Luke has made another trip around the sun. Ray Johnson, Bill Nye, Mike Rowe, or Emily Lakdawalla. Right in the back there. Hi, sir.

What's your name? Hi, my name is Robbie. Okay. I'm a sixth grade special ed teacher. How do you incorporate STEM with a program like social studies and history? That's a great question. If you think about what's involved in going from invention to innovation, invention being the creation of the idea and innovation being the application of the idea, people think of STEM as only the engineering or the technical piece up front. What's really important, though, is to complete the spectrum. The humanities, the music, the art, the history knowledge, all those things up front make you a more creative person. And then the business knowledge

on the end helps you translate those ideas into products and services. And so both are important. So I think there certainly is a role for the humanities in the STEM process. The thing that changed my whole worldview was a TV show, and I know, I bet you've seen it. It's not in production anymore, but it's called Connections. Oh, yeah, James Burke. And it was hosted by James Burke.

The day the universe changed. Exactly. And what this guy, this was the professor everybody wished they had in college. You know, an Oxford professor who could show you and tell you why the tracks on the moon left by the lander are identical to the tracks left by the first Roman chariot. And it's because STEM has always been with us, but it's always been relative. The way the invention of the stirrup and the crossbow. The stirrup was a great one. It informed everything.

It's a great episode. So just make it relevant to the time that you're teaching. That's all I would do. Well, the other thing I tell people is that it's incredibly important to be able to explain your science to other people, both because you need to do that in order to have somebody pay you to do it. You have to write a grant proposal or something that explains why it's important. The other thing is nowadays there's not just one solitary person working in a lab on their own. Everything

is collaborative. You have to be able to work together with other people in a group environment in order to be able to accomplish anything. And so these skills, communication, expression, humanities, the arts, drama, public speaking, they're all important if you want to succeed in science and technology fields. Folks, we are out of time for this segment. I wish we could keep going. I don't know when we'll have this great a panel all together on stage, but can we do this again, I hope, sometime? Yes. I'm around all day.

Well, they want us to get off the Einstein stage. So let me just ask, Mike, what is next for you? I know you're working for CNN now. Yeah, we are picking up, we're taking dirty jobs and replacing dirt with mission. The new show is called Somebody's Gotta Do It. We go into production soon, and it'll be on CNN in the fourth quarter. If you have ideas, drop me a line because the audience will program

the show. I'm looking for the guy who built Stonehenge in his backyard, for instance. They're out there, and they're fascinating. And where do they go to drop you a line? You can go to microworks.com, info. Info at microworks. I haven't had an original idea in 10 years, so if you've got one, I'm happy to take it. Ray, what should people be looking for from Lockheed Martin? Exciting stuff? I think some of the exciting things we're working on are next generation problems, and the next generation problems you can see downstairs in our exhibit, but they're robotics, they're materials, they're manufacturing, genomics, and a lot of the future problems that the world will face.

Awesome presence by Lockheed Martin here at the festival. Would all of you help me thank Ray Johnson of Lockheed Martin and Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs and a lot more. Let's do it. You want to do it? Yeah, yeah. Okay. We're going to bring, they're going to do the selfie.

That looks pretty good, actually. That's a good one. The a cappella singing group that has been here all day for a couple of days singing about science, please welcome the Chromatics. Oh, man, absolutely. Joking. So we are astrophysicists, aerospace engineers, and computer techies, and our goal with these

songs that we've written ourselves is to spread science through music. We sing about things at the edges of space and time and hugely massive objects, but right now we're going to concentrate on the little guys. When you're traveling through space, it's vitally important to be able to tell the difference between the comets, the meteors, and the asteroids. This is Little Bit of Rock. One, two, three, four. Hey, baby, I'm a shooting star, a blazing racing tracer in the sky.

I'm heading for a surface 50,000 miles an hour, gonna hear my sudden impact, gonna feel my power. Catch you later when I create a I'm just a little bit of rock. Bow, bow, bow, bow, bow to bow. This ball that is where the media is. It's one of us who wiped out all the dinosaurs.

We're icy bits of comet, we're iron and we're rock. Striking through the sky, we're in atmospheric shock. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. Bow, bow, bow, bow, bow to bow in atmospheric shock. Hey baby, I'm a rock in space. A tumble jumbling body in the sky. Between Jupiter and Mars I make my presence felt.

In a band of rocky railings called the asteroid belt. I'm a series faster. I'm many thousand bits of rock. Belt, Palace, Ceres, Vesta And many thousand bits Of rock Small but it's where the asteroids A mess of planetesimals Are swinging in the boys

Shunks of past collisions or a tiny world Unformed, watch out for the Earthbusters, you have been warned Hey baby I'm a hunk sublime An icy, dirty snowball in the sky Gas is streaming from my nucleus, give a nighttime treat I'm a dropout from the old cloud with a regular beat Eccentric in my orbit through the solar plane

Passed too close to sunward and I'll never be the same Soul buddies with a comet's hunt plane. Pass too close to sunward and I'll never be the same. Small bodies with a comet's pun. Tails forever trailing out away from the sun. A yucca-tucky heli and a bit of hail fun. SL9 hit Jupiter, that show was not a flop.

Rockin' round the system with small bodies, right. We're asteroids and comets and we're difficult to sight. If we plunge into your atmosphere, we'll set the skies alight. Then we're meteors and fireballs, you'll glimpse us in the night. Just a little bit of rock.

Thank you. That's The Chromatics. Once again, you can find them at thechromatics.com, and they've got CDs out there that you can pick up. We can have a great time with that. Ladies and gentlemen,

please welcome Bruce Fetz of the Planetary Society and the What's Up segment that we do at the end of every show. Welcome, Bruce. Thanks, Matt. Good to be there. How's the show going?

It's going very well. A little bit late because it took like half an hour to get the internet up and running for you. So we got to scoot. Please tell us what's up and running for you. So we've got to scoot. Please tell us what's up in the night sky. So you broke the Internet again? I've got to stop doing that.

So night sky, we've got some great planets to look at. We've got Mars still quite bright after its opposition a couple weeks ago, so closest approach to Earth. Mars is up in the evening sky, low in the east, and then it gets higher and higher in the up in the evening sky, low in the east, and then it gets higher and higher in the east as the evening goes along. If you look below Mars, so rising right around sunset is Saturn, looking dimmer but yellowish. And then on the opposite side of the sky, we've got super bright Jupiter over in the west in the evening skies. You can pick up three

planets pretty easily in the evening sky. And then in the pre-dawn, Venus just dominating super bright over there in the east. That's our night sky. We move on to this week in space history. It was this week in 1996 that comet Hyakutake made its closest approach to Earth and made for some lovely viewing in the evening sky. One, two, three, random space fact. I worked on this one for you. We're going to do scale model solar systems.

I know how you love them. So here I've got my scale model sun. Head for scale. Wait a minute, are you on the right or the left? It doesn't matter, man. It's a scale model sun. If the sun is about this size, so 150 millimeters or a little under six inches, where do you suppose the Alpha Centauri star system, the closest star system to

Earth, where would it be on this scale? Right where you are, Matt. In Washington, D.C. at the USA Science and Engineering Festival. And obviously there are stars in the room there. Space is big. Space is really big. Sun this big, Alpha Centauri nearest star thousands of miles away. Over there in that wild, distant east coast that you're hanging out on these days. Nice random space fact. Let's go on to trivia.

All right. For the trivia contest, we asked you last time around, what was the dwarf planet Eris named after? Eris, recall, is the size of Pluto and even more massive. How'd we do, Matt? We do this every week. People write in with their answers. Sometimes they give us additional comments. This time, our winner, chosen by Random.org, is Daryl Gardner.

Daryl Gardner of Lake Stevens, Washington, who said that that dwarf planet Eris is named after the goddess Eris, a personification of strife, discord, and chaos. It is not the patron saint of planetary radio. patron saint of planetary radio. We hope not, but it does make sense considering the strife, chaos, and discord caused by Eris in figuring out if Pluto's a planet or not. And it's just interesting, darn it, no matter what you call it. I do want to mention we had a whole bunch of people

who said that they were still upset that we didn't stick with Eris's original name, Xena, Warrior Princess. Yeah, that didn't really fit the naming conventions, I guess. Yeah. Oh, well. Now, do you have something for the folks at home? Let's do that one, and then we'll give away some binoculars. In honor of one of our guests that I get the impression you have there,

what, in your opinion, is the dirtiest job in the space program? We're looking for authentic jobs, or at least plausible, so not cleaning up after Klingons, but in robotic or human space exploration, whatever.

What's the dirtiest job? We'll judge based upon whether we agree with you, and of course, humor always gets bonus points. Go to planetary.org slash radio contest to get us your entry. When do they need it in by, and what are they competing for, Matt? They are competing, pretty special, for a Celestron Cosmos Edition First Scope Telescope. We've got a box right here on stage. It's a really nice little telescope, great starter scope, and we thank Celestron for

providing that, and the prizes Celestron for providing that. And the prizes that we're going to be giving away to the live audience here in a moment, you need to get us that entry by Tuesday, May 6th, Tuesday, May 6th, at 8 a.m. Pacific time. Okay, very quickly, let's give away Celestron binoculars. We will start with some easy questions. What spacecraft is currently in orbit around Saturn? What spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn? Right there. Hi, ma'am. Cassini. You are absolutely right. She's one pair of Celestron binoculars. Come on up here and grab it.

Yes, please. How many moons does Mars have? Right here, sir. What's your name? Chris. Chris, how many? It has two moons, Phomos and Deimos. Phomos, Deimos, the names, too. Wonderful. Congratulations.

What rocket launched the Apollo astronauts to the moon? What rocket launched Apollo astronauts to the moon? He's letting you guys off so easy. I think it was the Eagle, but I'm not sure. No, the rocket that took it there. Let's go back to the other side. Hi there, you, sir. The Saturn V.

You are absolutely right. Come get your binoculars. What will be the end state of the sun? So in another 7 billion years or so, after it gets all upset with itself, what will it end up as another seven billion years or so, after it gets all upset with itself, what will it end up as? Seven billion years from now, what will our sun end up as? Let's go right here, sir. Is it a red giant? Red giant? That is incorrect. It will be a red giant, but it will not end up in that as its final state. How about you, Miss? It'll be a white dwarf.

A white dwarf. A white dwarf. That is correct. Yay! We got rid of another pair of binoculars. Thank you, guys. Good job. Bruce, we can close this out. All right, everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky,

and think about long coast-to-coast flights and the joys of not taking them. Thank you, and good night. And may I say, Bruce, that your roughly ten-foot-high face looming over the stage has never looked lovelier. We are done. We are especially grateful to Larry Bach and all the other amazing folks who have once again

pulled off the biggest and best public science event in history. This special edition of Planetary Radio at the USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, D.C. has been produced by the Planetary Society and is made possible by the always festive members of the Planetary Society. I want to thank all of you for joining us.

Clear skies, everyone. We'll go out with a little bit of one more tune from the Chromatics. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do It's a calm and cloudless night little bit of one more tune from the Chromatics. On the shoulders of giants That Copernicus was right Come outside with me tonight And I can show you wonders of the world To surprise and delight I've got my telescope with me Just wait until you see

We'll stand on the shoulders of giants On the shoulders of giants To see beyond