Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Remembering Bruce Murray

Episode Date: September 2, 2013

The passing of Planetary Society co-founder and former JPL Director Bruce Murray has been marked around the world. Planetary Radio takes its turn with this special tribute.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Any planet that offers the potential for at least human visiting and bases the way Mars does clearly warrants our attention. The late Bruce Murray heard on this program more than ten years ago. Welcome to a special edition of Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. to a special edition of Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. We are delaying our program about the MAVEN mission so that we can pay tribute to a pioneering planetary scientist and explorer. We'll hear from his longtime colleague

and friend, Louis Friedman, and we'll reminisce with Bruce Betts about his time with Dr. Murray at Caltech and the Planetary Society. First to share his thoughts is the current leader of the Society, Bill Nye. Bill, with this special edition of Planetary Radio, we mark the passing of a great man, a great explorer.

Bruce Murray. Bruce Murray was one of the three founders of the Planetary Society, along with my predecessor, Lou Friedman, and the very well-known Carl Sagan. And in my opinion, Matt, Bruce Murray changed the world. By all accounts, in these meetings for Mariner 9 spacecraft, things that went to Mars, Bruce was the guy who really pointed out to everybody the great scientific value of cameras and how they would contribute to our understanding, especially the planet Mars. This was at a time when scientists thought that cameras would be a publicity stunt. These people wanted to send Geiger counters and thermometers and light level meters without actually taking a picture.

Can you imagine a space program without pictures? No one would be interested at all in the level that we are today. It's hard to even imagine a time when they wouldn't realize how not just scientifically useful, but how incredibly dramatic and awe inspiring these images would be. You're absolutely right. And I just personally, I can't help but reflect on my time in Carl Sagan's astronomy course many years ago, where he brought in these first pictures from Mars, from the Viking landers. It was astonishing. I mean, look at Hubble Space Telescope pictures. They're astonishing, let alone the early pictures from Mars. There's a very well-known

book called Mars and the Mind of Man. Carl Sagan, Ray Bradbury, and Bruce argue or discuss the great value of exploration of Mars. And this is before people really proved that Mars was once very wet, before people really imagined rover missions that we have today. Bruce was the guy. We will miss him. And I'll tell you personally, I just love the guy. I mean, I spent a lot of time with him in board meetings of the Planetary Society. And he was just quite a businessman. I mean, quite a businessman, charmer. And of course, as by all accounts, very forceful. I mean, when he figured something out, he wanted everybody to know that he had figured it out. And he would

explain it to me. He was a good debater, very skilled making, structuring an argument. He was really, just, I'm going to miss him. He's a great guy. The thing I'm most sorry about is that I never heard one of these apparently titanic arguments between him and Carl Sagan. And the thing that I will remember the best, I think,

most easily and maybe for the longest, his laugh. Oh, man. He was just, he was a force, and he changed the world. We will miss him. Bill, thank you so much for getting us started with this tribute program today. We're going to talk to some other folks, but this was a very good start. Thank you, Matt.

Bill Nye is the CEO of the Planetary Society, the science guy. He'll be with us again next week. Up next is Emily Lakdawalla. Emily, we will no doubt hear from just about everybody today about how important Bruce Murray was to the gathering of images by missions around our solar system. But you have a different angle. Yeah, you know, Bruce Murray famously was insistent about having a camera on the Mariner missions that went to Mars and indeed other planetary spacecraft. You can certainly make a strong case for how important images are for science and even just for placing other data in context.

But, of course, they also revealed to us how Mars was a cratered world. And eventually they revealed to us that Mars had valleys and everything. But I think that the images were, of course, incredibly important at establishing the appearance of Mars in the popular imagination. All the ideas that we have for Mars as a place with these river valleys and these canyons and these incredibly tall mountains and deposits of ice. And as all of the cameras have come to Mars since then, they've given us much more detailed views of the planet and really made it feel like a place we could actually go and explore on foot. And I think that his vision, that pictures of Mars and of other planets can give us that sense of these other worlds as places

was incredibly important to the popular imagination of the planet. Do these images, even from the very early days, the Mariner missions, do they live on? They do. And they're much more difficult to work with than modern image data. Modern cameras have CCDs. They're digital. They're very easy to work with. The older Mariner data does exist in a digital form. And it's actually not terribly hard to open up, but it's really gnarly looking data. There's all kinds of issues with it. They were taken with Viticons, which were TV cameras. There's a lot of distortion in the images. There's these Rizzo markings, these black dots, and a lot of noise, actually a little salt and pepper speckle from errors made during transmission back to

Earth. But of course, all my friends in the amateur image processing community are more than equal to the task of making these pictures beautiful. And I plan to post just a few of my favorites of the images that I've seen produced from the Mariner 4, 6, and 9 image catalogs. So those may be up by the time you hear this radio program in Emily's blog at planetary.org. Check for it. It's not up as we record this, but will be soon. Maybe this is a nice segue into just a word about your blog entry for August 29th, which is all about images. That's right, except it's of a different planet. Another one that Bruce Murray held very dear, which was Venus.

And there is a European mission that has been exploring Venus for six Earth years. That's 10 Venus years, taking photos of the motions of its clouds. And they swirl and they move. They're pretty amazing. And I've got some really pretty pictures that have been put together from that data by an amateur, Bjorn Johnson, and an explanation of a scientific paper that came out of those 10 Venus years of scientific study of Venus's clouds. Venus Express is still there, of course, but not for very much longer. That's getting very low on fuel. So let's hope that it

lasts as long as possible to continue returning to us these pictures of Venus's swirling clouds. Emily, thank you for this very appropriate tribute to this part of Bruce Murray's legacy, the imaging portion, and what it's meant both to science and the public. You're welcome, Matt. She's a senior editor for the Planetary Society and our planetary evangelist, contributing editor to Sky and Telescope magazine. That's Emily Lakdawalla. We're going to continue our tribute this week to Bruce Murray by talking to Lou

Friedman, the surviving founder of the Planetary Society, in just a moment. Dr. Bruce Murray passed away on August 29th at the age of 81. Thank heaven he left petroleum engineering for a job at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory 53 years ago. He would rise to become director of the lab, but not until he had championed planetary science missions and especially putting cameras on robotic explorers. While still serving as director, he joined Carl Sagan and Lou Friedman to found the Planetary Society, becoming its president.

He would continue to do research and teach at Caltech until illness forced him into full retirement. Executive Director Emeritus Friedman and former Society Associate Director Charlene Anderson have written a far more complete remembrance of their friend and colleague.

You can find it at planetary.org. I was honored to get Lou on a somewhat shaky Skype line for a conversation about Dr. Murray. Lou, I am so glad to be able to talk to you on this day when we were honoring a guy who was your boss, your friend, your colleague, and, of course, your co-founder of the Planetary Society. I also want to thank you for the wonderful tribute, both tribute and obituary, that you and our former colleague Charlene Anderson wrote that is posted at planetary.org. It's a very nice piece. This has got to have been a somewhat difficult week for you. Difficult, inevitable in many ways, of course, but certainly difficult, Bruce. You're quite right.

And I go back right to the very first day I showed up for work at JPL some more than 40 years ago. Many, many experiences with him in all of the roles that one could imagine as a boss, who actually even fired me at JPL at least a few hours, and as a colleague and as a friend with family friends that we're quite close to over the years as well. And of course, as you mentioned, the extraordinary opportunity I had and privilege to work with him and Carl Sagan together, just the three of us for many months before we got it going in this venture that is now known as the Planetary Society. Before we talk a little bit more about that genesis of the Society,

just wax poetic on how important this man was to planetary exploration. Well, no, man, I'm sorry. I don't know how to wax poetic on this. I'm sure you do. I'm afraid I'll have to try and confine myself to ordinary musings and ordinary thoughts. But Bruce was, in many senses, a giant in planetary exploration, in the whole space business itself. What always was remarkable was his incredible insight to get the big picture at the same time as to work on the tactical detail of whatever experiment or picture or image or scientific interpretation was being worked on at the same time. And it's that going back and forth between the broad vision of what we're doing by exploring

other worlds with the precise science of what you're measuring as you try to understand a piece of data that I found so much that I learned from Bruce about that. And it's the essence of planetary exploration, because what we do in planetary exploration isn't like quantum physicists who discover these new laws of nature and understand something that is so precise about science, incredibly sophisticated mathematics and physical processes understanding that understands, we have to step back and get this new vision of things and picture.

And I'm not putting down either one of the aspects. They're both wonderful, but you have to do both. You have to get the details and you have to get the big picture. And Bruce was extraordinary at that. As a leader, I mean, he had quite a reputation as a guy who spoke his mind and could ride pretty roughshod over folks, but he certainly seemed to be somebody who got things done. Well, when Bruce made the transition from just, I use this word jokingly, a professor at Caltech to the director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

I only had one piece of advice for him, and I wasn't in much of a position to give advice. I was just an employee. I said, Bruce, don't complain about the elevators being too slow. You're waiting to go up to your office on the ninth floor at JBL. In the old days when you did that, nobody paid any attention to you. You were just some guy at Caltech. Now you're the director, and as soon as you complain about the speed of the elevators, there will be a construction crew in and a $200,000 retooling of the elevator shaft in order to accommodate the wishes of the director.

elevator shaft in order to accommodate the wishes of the director. So be careful about expressing that professorial opinion out. Of course, he ignored me. It was actually one of his misunderstood aspects is that he would, in a meeting, be very difficult on people. He would challenge them. He would call them, he wouldn't actually call them stupid, but he would sort of infer that you hadn't thought it out right. You might be a little stupid about the way you were approaching it. them, they wouldn't actually call them stupid, but he would sort of infer that you hadn't thought it out right, you might be a little stupid about the way you were approaching it. And he would anger people because he was so strong in trying to elicit precise thinking out of you that they took offense.

And a lot of people did take offense when Bruce had that interaction with him. But what he was doing was eliciting discussion, trying to sharpen up the intellectual argument, and he never viewed it as a personal item at all. And it was part of that, if you will, professorial tradition. It was part of his style of doing things. incredibly rewarding experience because then you were able to sharpen what you were thinking of and actually sharpen what he was thinking of. For all his strong opinion and direction, he was very good at listening, valued experts greatly. I told Bill Nye a few minutes ago that one of my greatest regrets is that I was never present to see one of the battles that I've been told about that periodically took place between Bruce Murray and Carl Sagan. Well, you know, Bruce and Carl were sort of famous antagonists in the early, late 60s, early 70s. It was a little like the classic argument of glasses of water being half full or half empty.

Carl would approach arguments and say, well, that's possible. Let's take it through and look at it in some detail. Whereas Bruce would approach it from a little bit the other side, which is, that's impossible. Prove to me that it isn't. Carl was kind of like, well, we know that Mars has frozen ice. We know that it's possible to have that water under the surface. And he would push on that subject, suggesting that there could be processes in which life would form. Bruce would emphasize, look at the data. The data is that there's hardly a more toxic place you could imagine than the surface of Mars. You know, Sure, you can speculate about anything in science, but the idea that you should be suggesting that this is possible,

and the two of them would classically debate this with some degree of pushiness, and yet they each respected each other's opinions greatly, and between the two of them, they came out with extraordinary progress on Mars exploration. It was Bruce who sold the idea that this is exploration, not just pure science. We have to take images because we don't know what we'll find, whereas a lot of scientists were saying, oh, don't take those pictures.

Pictures are just stunts. We need to get more precise instrument data. And so Bruce did have the big picture of exploration in mind, even while being a skeptic, and he interacted very, very well with Carl. I got to tell you, there was one meeting very early in the Planetary Society where we were groping around for why do we even want to exist and what's our mission and what are we doing? Why do people get excited about planetary exploration and what is our mission and how are we, what are we doing? You know, what, why do people get excited about planetary exploration and what is it that we want to emphasize? I can't even remember. This is how well I put the two of them together, even though they're so different, which one of

them said it first, but maybe it was Carl. He says, you know, what we're really doing in these missions is we are looking for ourselves. And Bruce picked right up on that and said that's exactly right. And to me, that's been a sort of a watchword ever since, that much of what we do in understanding the processes, planetary exploration, what goes on on different worlds, what they're made of, what their evolution has been, how we interact with environments here on Earth and how the Earth interacts with environments out in the solar system is really trying to understand who we are and ourselves. And I thought that was a good capture of it in just a few words and a half a sentence. So even though they took rather different approaches, it sounds like Bruce was as excited about what could be found out there as Carl was.

Oh, absolutely. Bruce was very strong, very excited, very positive about exploration. He would frequently, in political arguments with scientists, look at them incredulously and said, what do you think we're getting hundreds of millions of dollars for these missions? Not for the science. If you had to compete in a science institute for this kind of thing, you wouldn't be getting this kind of money. We get this kind of money because we're exploring other worlds. We're looking for new things. It's the big picture of exploration as well as the

adventure of exploration. And he was absolutely excited about it. And of course, he's famous at JPL because he came in and he was distressed about proposals which were kind of weak. He called them gray mice. And he started a whole new activity of saying, let's get rid of the gray mice. We're going to replace them with purple pigeons. And that led to both the solar sail work at JPL to try a highly common rendezvous. It led to looking for rovers on Mars, which had hitherto not been planned. It led to looking to do a orbiter and probe of Titan with its hydrocarbon-laced atmosphere around Saturn.

These were missions that were too ambitious for the thinking in the budget-cutting days of the 70s. And Bruce said, no, we're looking for purple pigeons, something that will be so exciting they can't resist going for that. Other than the obvious in making you one of the three co-founders of the Planetary Society, how did Bruce shape your life? Well, in many ways. The first day I got to work at JPL, my boss was actually on a trip. He had left a note and it said, go down to Caltech. There's a meeting there being chaired by a guy named Bruce Murray, and it's about the Mariner Venus Mercury mission, and that's what you're going to work on. Go see what you can learn. So I met him,

truly, on my first day. I walked up and I said introduce myself and he kind of dismissively told me to go find a seat and so I really know him from my very first day at JPL it was many years of various mission studies that we did and interactions I got to know him a little bit in the early 70s a little more in the mid 70s, a little more in the mid-70s as I became a manager of advanced studies. Certainly when the solar sail project got attention, I was the director of that. He was a great enthusiast on it, so we started traveling together. We took many trips together, actually. He never got used to my way of personally doing things. I never got used to his way of personally doing things, but we really enjoyed each other a great deal. And we did so many trips together as far as to

Russia together, many to Washington, of course, for various NASA meetings. And then he, as I mentioned earlier in this discussion, did really give me appreciation for the interaction of intellectual discipline in science and broad thinking about its implications in exploration. That has been a hallmark of what I've tried to do over the years, is to constantly work on that interface between the details of mission design or science planning and its implications for the society, political system, public interest. Just one other question. I brought this up with Bill. I told Bill Nye that I think the thing I may miss the most about this man is his laugh, which was frequently directed at himself.

Well, he had a great sense of humor. And yeah, you're right. It was, I hadn't thought of it exactly that way. But he did very much laugh at himself. And Bruce had a reputation for not suffering fools well. In fact, we used to joke, somebody would write a crazy letter to the Planetary Society, or somebody would get some press attention for something that was really offbeat. And he would look at Carl and say, you know, Carl, you're going to be better at this, dealing with this than I am because you can, you handle this. He would just walk away. He would not do that.

But they, that was another example of the interaction where I think each played to their strengths. They had a sense of humor about it, but a sense, as I say, I can't overemphasize what I call the intellectual rigor and honesty that Bruce had. I wrote this, so it's on my mind. I think you'll see something about this in the article I wrote. And that is always with such people, it's not just the great things they do, the great images he got to the world of the Mariner missions at Mars and leadership of the laboratory to get the Voyager missions on their way out to the outer planets.

So much else in planetary science and exploration. But to me, what Bruce should be remembered for is his legacies. He gave us pictures of other worlds which are so important now in our understanding of the solar system. He gave many students at Caltech extraordinary education, influence, and collegial work. These students now are spread throughout the country doing great science. He gave us the Planetary Society. He and Carl, the co-founding of the society, which lives on as a legacy of Bruce Murray's. So he has these legacies of planetary imaging, of students, of institutional development, and of course of JPL, which thrives as it made the transition from an organization built up in the space age under the Apollo budget era

to an agency which continues to do extraordinarily great missions, even in the declining budget era, and establishing planetary science as what we call the jewel in NASA's crown. Lou, you've been very generous with your time, as I've taken more of it than I told you we would. Thank you for sharing everything that you've had to say about your colleague, your friend, Bruce Murray. Well, thank you, Matt. I don't resent the time at all. It's obvious that we could talk about him for hours, if not days on end. I'm sure that's true. We're going to talk with one of those students that Bruce Murray had tremendous influence over in just a few moments, someone we know well on this program, Bruce Betts, the Planetary Society's Director of Projects.

Lou Friedman, of course, is one of the co-founders of the Planetary Society with Carl Sagan and Bruce Murray, Executive Director for a good three decades or so, the founding executive director of the Society. And before that, worked at JPL, used to run all things Mars at that place, under this fellow that we're talking about, Bruce Murray. We'll be back in just a moment with Bruce Betts. 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

and 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. Hi, this is Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society. We've spent the last year creating an informative, exciting, and beautiful new website. Your place in space is now open for business. You'll find a whole new look with lots of images, great stories, my popular blog, and new blogs from

my colleagues and expert guests. And as the world becomes more social, we are too, giving you the opportunity to join in through Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and much more. It's all at planetary.org. I hope you'll check it out. We've got Bruce Betts on the Skype line, as we often do. We're going to put aside the usual silliness, at least for a couple of minutes here, and talk to Bruce about his teacher, mentor, and one time pretty much boss, Bruce Murray, which, of course, is the person that we're dedicating the show to. Bruce, thanks, first of all, for taking this up on what must have been a somewhat painful week.

Yeah, it's been a tough loss for me and for the community. Is it fair to have said that he was your mentor, at least during one part of your life? Oh, definitely. Definitely. No, I was affected more by Bruce Murray than pretty much anyone other than my family in my life. My professor, PhD advisor for those many years at Caltech and then obviously stayed in contact. And he and the people he had introduced me to with the Planetary Society was how I got refolded into the Planetary Society and why I'm working here now. How did you first meet him? I first met him when I came to do research at Caltech after being accepted as a graduate student. But it was kind of funny because I had had the Planetary Society membership card that I carried around in my wallet. And here was the signatures of Carl Sagan, who I knew quite well. And then this guy named Bruce C. Murray.

Many years later after joining, I got accepted to Caltech and I was assigned, they assign you for the initial summer research to someone. I was assigned to Bruce and it's like, hey, it's that guy from my wallet. That's so cool. So I met him when I went down to start doing research. Were you intimidated? Oh, yeah. Definitely. Coming to graduate school at Caltech with the guy in my wallet guy, who then you find out was director

of JPL and is a Caltech professor, pioneer in the field. Eventually find out that he finished his PhD in two years, which is a little hard to take when you're first starting your multi-year PhD program. We've heard from many people that he did not suffer fools lightly. Not that you had to worry about that. No, no. However you view that, he did not suffer fools well at all. And in fact, even those he respected, he would engage in hearty conversation. But I do want to point out there were different Bruce Murrays.

So I saw a very different side in how he interacted with my family, for example, where he'd just become a nice guy. And also over the years, seeing his concern for me and for my family and for my kids. So there was this warm-hearted Bruce Murray, but if you engaged him on research or in a seminar or if he felt someone was saying something stupid, he was quick to let them know. And it didn't matter who it was. It could be a Nobel Prize winner or an undergraduate. He would let them know. Very democratic. Do you have another favorite anecdote? Do you have another favorite anecdote?

Oh, there are so many. The one that pops to mind is really anecdotal and disturbing, which was when I – Bruce got me involved with the Soviets because we had nothing flying at Mars when I was in graduate school. And the Soviets had their Phobos 88 mission. So we traveled to Moscow a couple times together. One time, repeating the mistakes, by the way, of Napoleon and Hitler and first visiting Moscow during the wintertime. We went there, and one night we went to the side of this building. We were taken there by some of our Soviet, at that time, colleagues. And they opened this door on the side of this big building and who pops out but Soviet scientists wearing only towels. It was a very disturbing thing and even more disturbing as everyone ended up in that state and I experienced the pain of a

Soviet sauna experience and that was just one of the stranger experiences I had that pops to mind. And Bruce just kind of trying to adapt to it. And seeing your professor in ways that I wish so desperately I could erase. Hopefully that was a good anecdote, not too personal. That's a lovely anecdote. Anything that he ever told you that really stayed with you that maybe still guides your professional life or your personal life for that matter? it's kind of that not suffering fools, but as I've made people uncomfortable in all the years since, you're just trained to not accept anything without questioning it. And so having that, no matter who's talking, what about, just the questioning of sniffing out what really doesn't make sense, even if they're presenting it like it does.

So just through experience and being on the short end of that, I learned that process. He had a much broader perspective for whether you view that as good or bad. I viewed it as good. So most are focused very much on their research and they're excellent at it and other people's research. The bad side was he'd get kind of distracted and you wouldn't have as much time for him as an advisor, though it taught you independence. But on the other hand, he was involved with things like the Planetary Society and pushing for space exploration and not accepting stupid plans for bad space exploration. And so you just saw a broader world putting on workshops for future human exploration of Mars. And there was always this additional aspect of being with Bruce,

including doing slave labor for the Planetary Society. He produced a ton of graduate students, many of them leaders in the science field, and then a set of them doing different oddball things, running engineering companies and directing projects at the Planetary Society and building camera systems. And so there was kind of a broader output from his students in some way as well. Well, I am proud, very proud to have known him and spent a little bit of time with him myself and envious of those of you who actually spent much more time with him and benefited that way. And as Lou Friedman put it, I envy you for being very much a part of his legacy. And as Lou Friedman put it, I envy you for being very much a part of his legacy.

So with that, if we can possibly move from that to doing that usual thing that we do every week, what's up? Well, appropriately for Bruce, Mars is up in the pre-dawn skies, so I'll mention that. First, it's outshone, as usual, by Jupiter in the pre-dawn sky, but they're both up there. Jupiter looking super bright, Mars being that reddish thing down below Jupiter. This is all over in the pre-dawn east. In the evening sky, we've got grooviness still with Venus still dominating low in the west shortly after sunset. Also hanging out over there, Saturn and Spica. And if you go out, mark your date for a pretty collection of objects on September 8th. The moon is only a half degree or so away from Venus, so about a moon's width

away, the crescent moon. Saturn is only about three degrees away from that. 1977, Voyager 1 was launched. I always like to point out it was launched about two and a half weeks after Voyager 2. So Voyager 2 launched before Voyager 1. Always a good random space fact, but they were sent on different trajectories. So Voyager 1 got to Jupiter and Saturn first. Voyager 2 got put on a trajectory that would eventually lead it to Uranus and Neptune. And for you, Matt, every year, I have to point out, 1966, Star Trek premiered this week. Hallowed be its name. Okay, on to Random Space Fact.

Bruce Murray teach you how to sing, too? That would explain a lot. Yeah, I don't think either of us are particularly adept at singing. I don't think that was a requirement for being a Bruce Murray student, but I don't know, maybe. So Bruce Murray, going to keep the focus. So Bruce Murray was the head of the Mariner 10 imaging team that went by Venus and then was the first to explore Mercury. team that went by Venus and then was the first to explore Mercury. From that and other things, he wrote a textbook along with Ron Greeley and Mike Malin called Earth-Like Planets, which although out of date on the details, still is an excellent source of the conceptual ways to think about

studying the terrestrial planets. We move on to the trivia contest. And I asked you, in what galaxy, about 30 million light years away, did a supernova occur in late July 2013? Supernova, which still, if you have a good telescope, is still visible in the 13th magnitude type brightness. One thing I learned from this, Matt, from hearing the responses responses was there are a lot more supernovas observed than I really gave credit for. This one's much brighter than most of them as seen from Earth, but we got a lot of different answers, I guess, and we haven't accepted any that worked. But there was the one I was talking about that was brighter than 30 million light years away. So tell me a story. There are stories about this all over the universe. Apparently,

they're just stars popping off all the time. With apologies to the civilizations that may or may not have been ruined by that event. Yes, that makes it okay. So the guy who won and it does happen to be with the one that you had in mind is Daniel Salkin. Daniel Sucon of Forest Hills, New York, who said that this particular one was just observed in late July. It was in the galaxy known as Messier 74. It's now called SN 2013 EJ. Is that what you had in mind? Yeah, although I'm used to its nickname Bob. That's not true. But yes, that was the one I had in mind. Well, actually, Bjorn Getta, he said that the people who used to live there simply called it the sun. In the few moments they had left, I bet they called it a lot of other things, actually.

And typical of lots of other people, Randy Bottom, he just came up with, I got it, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten other galaxies. And that, he says, is only back to the beginning of July. Good Lord, the universe is a busy place. Anyway. It is. And we actually have the assets to be observing such things, which is also different and amazing. Daniel, we're going to send you a large brand new Planetary Radio t-shirt. The new design.

Gave my brother one, and he likes it a lot. He said, oh boy, I like this better than the old design. So I was glad to hear that. I like it too. All right. New question. And we'll finish off the Bruce Murray Show with a Bruce Murray question, but in the land of trivia. What was Bruce Murray's middle name?

Murray question, but in the land of trivia, what was Bruce Murray's middle name? So go to our webpage, planetary.org slash radio contest and enter. And what are they trying to win? And when are they trying to get it in by, Matt? They're going to get it into us by the 9th. And people, you have no excuses. This is going to be incredibly easy to find. So join this in honor of Bruce Murray. You've got until the 9th, Monday, September 9th at 2 p.m. Pacific time to enter this one. Bruce, thank you very much, as always, but especially this week. Thank you. And there are similar and additional reflections I put up about Bruce on planetary.org and also a more traditional obituary with some of his accomplishments that you can find there. And one thing that one of my former office mates,

Hari Nair, pointed out there was another Bruce thing that he told when he taught the oral communication class on giving talks was, tell him what you're going to tell him, tell him, and then tell him again. That's good advice. Which we usually don't have time for on the radio. All right, everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky,

and think about Bruce Murray slamming the table and saying, Damn it, Lou! Thank you, and good night. Now there finally is one that I actually got to witness. We spend time with Bruce Betts, the director of projects, every week here as part of What's Up on Planetary Radio, just as he used to spend lots of time with his mentor, Bruce Murray. A couple of special treats now for all of you listening to this extended online version of the show.

Bruce Murray was a guest on Planetary Radio many times over our nearly 11 years. The 10-year-old clip I played at the beginning was actually his second appearance, the first having been with Freeman Dyson and Lou Friedman. I've put links to many of these on this week's episode page that you can reach from planetary.org slash radio. Here are another few seconds from that 2003 telephone conversation that came as the Planetary Society was preparing to throw author Ray Bradbury a birthday party. Mars also happened to be at opposition, and it was closer to Earth than it had been for 50,000 years. My wife and I are looking forward very much to seeing him, giving him a big hug, and then going on up to Mount Wilson Observatory afterwards to look at Mars

with a 16-inch telescope and other telescopes up there. I've seen Mars at the same period of time called Opposition as early as 1960, and it's an overwhelming experience. I likened it once to seeing a wonderful Japanese lantern glowing up there in the telescope with these soft colors, and you should be able to see the northern polar cap.

It would be fantastic. Well, Bruce, I think Carl would be proud of you for that last statement. Now, flash forward to 2009. As an open house was underway around us, I welcomed Dr. Murray back, this time joined by Bruce Betts, for a conversation about water and ice on the moon and other worlds. Bruce Betts for a conversation about water and ice on the moon and other worlds. Keep in mind that Dr. Betts was once a Ph.D. candidate under the supervision and guidance of Dr. Murray. I got to tell you, I am really honored to have the two Bruce's here.

And what was the line from Star Wars? Now I am the master. I wish. Don't try anything, kid. All right. Well, you certainly don't look like Darth Vader. Bruce Murray, thank you very much for coming back to Planetary Radio. That's Lord Murray.

And Bruce Betts, the director of projects, of course, who joins us every week. You know, he's on the show every week. We're that desperate. Yeah. You know, he's on the show every week, so... We're that desperate. Yeah. Yeah, can we talk about ice on the moon? Please. Oh, God, please.

So, back in 1961, 48 years ago... Don't say that. Is this one of the things I did? No, I'm afraid not. You weren't even born then, for credit. Right. But was it 1961? Yes.

Where were you, Bruce? At Caltech. But you were still a student, right? A post-grad? Oh. No? You flatter me. I was a post-doctoral fellow there.

Oh, a post-doc. Okay, my apologies. Okay, my apologies. And what led you to start thinking about these deep, somewhat dark craters, permanently shadowed craters? Well, fortunately, because I can't remember, of course, what caused me to think about it, but you can't prove it either. So therefore, I'll make something up. Great. No, I think the real interest was in water.

That was a pretty important substance. It still is. And so I got thinking about it and I think the paper was actually called The Stability of Water on the Moon. And that was the idea. How stable is it? What's it take to get rid of it? What will cause it to stay? And that also led to considerations for the same question of Mars, because, again, water is pretty important stuff there. Pretty important down here too, Bob. So that led me into what became a long-term interest,

which was the stability of water on the terrestrial planets. I assume other people realized that these craters, especially the ones at the South Pole, would have these areas up near the rim that were permanently shadowed. You know, you're going to be unhappy because I'm going to tell you I can't remember. Oh, that's quite right. That's okay.

Whether there were other people who had thought of this or not, I don't know. Nobody else had published the idea before. Well, not about the ice, just that these craters had these shadows. But apparently it occurred to you first that, you know, if they're shadowed, how long would water ice last? Was anybody even thinking that, okay, maybe a comet hits these and they have some ice or water for a little while, but maybe it wouldn't last too long?

Well, you must remember that at that time there were probably six people working on that problem in the whole world. Oh, my. Okay. So it wasn't hard to be first or second. I don't remember actually who was working on it, but I had become interested in water on the moon and on Mars, actually, also. It turned out that I realized that the very fact that there was water vapor around there meant that there must be ice. And so the

real business was that ice would form in the shadows, and it becomes very stable for very long periods of time. When you say long periods of time, what are we talking about? Age of solar system. Seriously? Depends on the temperatures you get. You had asked me beforehand. This is – I have to jump in since it's the one thing I actually remember from taking classes from Bruce Murray.

All right. There may be others, is this plot of how incredibly stable water ice is. But you have to get it really cold, tens of kelvins to be, and then it becomes stable for billions of years conceptually. But I'll let the expert go back now. Longer than you're likely to live. But that was a new realization at the time.

And so it made you think, well, boy, there ought to be some ice up there. Maybe we ought to start looking for it. How about Mars? Will it be in the shadows of Mars? And on and on and on. So it got a ball rolling of intellectual pursuit, and that was the stability of ices in shadowed areas on the moon and terrestrial planets. Whenever you mention water and the moon, then juices start flowing in lots of people.

Sometimes justifiably, sometimes there isn't much really to justify it, but the juices still flow. The reason people are interested in water on the moon is that one, scientifically, but the more compelling reason is the idea that there may be human flight and colonies to the moon sometime. In which case, water is very, very important because we don't have it, and it's very expensive to transport a spaceship full of water to the moon. So that's why I think it's worth paying attention to

because if it's held up that there is a source of water on the moon that's fairly plentiful, then it might change some people's attitude about whether humans could really build a long-term endeavor there. You mentioned Mars as well. So here's a place where we know there's lots and lots of ice, not far below the surface, sometimes right on the surface for a little while. Were you saying a minute ago, I think you did, that that was also something you were considering back there in 1961? Well, I'll say yes. I'm sure of what reaction that's going to provoke. But yes, I mean, water is such an important substance. If you find it on any astronomical body, you're

going to pay attention. And if it's one that you didn't think was there and you find evidence for it, that's big news. Since he won't mention, Bruce was on one of the key papers in the mid-60s that predicted the movement of water and carbon dioxide ice on Mars and interactions of the poles on or off and really pushed that field forward an awful lot in trying to understand the water and carbon dioxide cycles on Mars. Dr. Murray, did you hear the recent story that said that it's quite possible that Viking 1,

and I think it was just, maybe it was just Viking 2, right, if it had managed to dig down just a few more centimeters, it might very well have hit a layer of ice. I haven't heard that yet. As I often say with rumors, good luck. Maybe it's true. But how would that have changed things? I mean, this was a time when you were still doing a lot at that little laboratory up the street.

Yeah, at Caltech. Yeah. If Viking had come up with that incontrovertible evidence. Well, as we now know, it could have easily done so, had it hit a different place. That discovery on Mars of Viking actually pulling up a little bit of ice and dropping it into the lab there. How that might have changed things. Well, we of course knew that there was ice on Mars. Yeah.

We could see it with telescopes from the Earth, white frost and things like that. I think the nature of the space exploration activity, I won't use business because I don't find it to be profitable, but the activity creates sort of a bow wave of expectation and enthusiasm in the public. And one of the things that does that is the notion of ICE. Because ICE is obviously something everybody understands and that it could be very important. We didn't have that experience. We didn't. But if we had, I think it would have given at least a near-term boost to Mars exploration. Wasn't, his picture is hanging right above your head as I look toward you across the microphone

here. You're co-founder of the Society, Carl, Carl Sagan. Wasn't he also a big believer that once we really were, had the tools to look, we would find water and ice all over the place? I think that's right. He and I differed because he was a chronic pessimist, optimist, and I'm a chronic pessimist. That's for sure. Seems where I learned it from. Yes. And therefore he was in favor of water and ice on Mars until all possible arguments to the contrary were exhausted. I was not that way. So we had a fundamental disagreement in how we looked at things.

Both are valid. Both have good reasons for them. And they were just the different temperaments that Carl and I had. But it does point out that there is room for two good scientists to come at something from very different directions. Right. And to be quite convinced of the veracity of their conclusions. Absolutely. As long as we're on the topic and we're just about out of time, here we are in, what, the living room of this old house off of Colorado Boulevard, where you and Carl and Lou Friedman got things going so many years ago.

Still fun to come by this place? Oh, yes. It's really a beautiful old house here. I love it. And for those of us who've been around since the beginning of the Planetary Society, this is a little cathedral out here. Yeah. Bruce Murray and Bruce Betts on this program in October of 2009.

It would be Dr. Murray's last appearance on the show. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by a grant from the Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation and by the members of the Planetary Society. Clear skies, Bruce.