Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Sir Arthur Clarke: A Tribute

Episode Date: March 24, 2008

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A tribute to Sir Arthur Clark, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan. Predicting the future is hard enough. Arthur Clarke not only did a good job predicting it, he helped create it. We'll mark last week's passing of this citizen of the future and of the galaxy who never lost his sense of wonder. You'll hear my last conversation with Sir Arthur in which he covered everything from life on Mars to the true origin of hobbits.

Emily Lakdawalla returns to Q&A later in the program, and we'll wrap up as always with Bruce Betts for a look around the solar system that Arthur took us to so many times. Bill Nye will return next week. Arthur C. Clarke was a longtime supporter of the Planetary Society. When the Society asked him to record a message for the future Martians, our children who will live there, he jumped at the chance. The result was just one of his contributions to Visions of Mars, the collection of stories, messages, and artwork that was originally sent to the Red Planet on a mission that failed. That same collection is once again on board a Mars lander. Phoenix will reach the Martian polar region in May of this year.

Here is the message Arthur provided almost exactly 15 years ago. My name is Arthur Clark, and I'm speaking to you from the island of Sri Lanka, also known as Ceylon in the Indian Ocean and at Earth. It's spring in the year 1993, but I'm sending this message to the future. I'm addressing men and women, perhaps some of you already born, who will hear these words when they're living on the planet Mars. As we approach the end of the millennium,

there's great interest in the world which may be the first new home for mankind beyond the mother planet Earth. I've been lucky enough in my lifetime to see our knowledge of Mars change from total ignorance, in fact worse, pure fantasy, to a real knowledge of the geography and climate of your wonderful world. True, we are still ignorant of many things which you take for granted, but we can appreciate how one day Mars may be transformed, terraformed, to make a home near to the house desire.

Perhaps you are already engaged on that centuries-long project. There was a time, a soon after the first lunar landing in 1969, when we were optimistic enough to imagine that we might be on Mars by 1990. I described how the sole survivor of the first ill-fated Mars expedition watched the transit of Earth on May 11, 1984, when the Earth moved across the face of the Sun, looking from Mars like a tiny, perfectly circular sunspot. sunspot. Well, there was no one on Mars then to observe that event, but it will occur again in November 10, 2084. By that time, I hope there'll be many eyes looking back towards Earth, and I've suggested that we signal to you by powerful laser beams so that you see a star flashing a message to you from the very face of the sun. I, too, salute you across the gulfs of space

as I send my greetings and good wishes from the closing decade of the century in which mankind first became a space-faring species and set forth on a journey which will never end so long as the universe endures. The late Arthur Clarke, speaking to the future inhabitants of Mars as part of the Visions of Mars project, now headed to the Red Planet. We roll forward now to March of 2003.

A new weekly radio series about space exploration is airing on just one station, rather than the 125 that play it today. Arthur, who had sat with Walter Cronkite as we landed on the moon, consented to an interview on that little radio show. I began by asking Arthur what he thought about the science fiction prize named after him that had just been awarded to two much younger writers. I haven't the faintest idea, anything beyond last week. It's the late Jurassic to me. And I'm involved in quite a number of awards, too, in science fact, science fiction, and elsewhere, but I'm very happy to have this one going. I'm sorry to say that I do practically no reading now. I haven't read a novel, I think, for a year or so, and I don't see any of the science fiction magazines.

All I do see is Locus, which keeps me up to date on what is happening in the science fiction field. And, of course, I do read the magazines like Discover, which is sitting on my desk at the moment, and Sky and Telescope and New Scientist. So I'm fairly well in touch with the real science. We should say, though, that the fact that you're not reading other people's novels doesn't mean that you've stopped writing them. After we take a break in a few minutes, we hope you'll talk to us about your current project that's underway,

a very intriguing title, The Last Theorem. current project that's underway, a very intriguing title, The Last Theorem, you do occupy an extremely distinguished spot in the world of science fiction, well, in the world, really. And I wonder, when you hear from writers who came to the world of science fiction long after you did, people like David Brennan, Kim Stanley Robinson, I mean, do they treat you like sort of a living god or a mentor or just one of the guys? Well, I hope they don't. I hope they treat me like an ordinary human being. But I'm sorry to say I haven't had any contact with anyone for a long time. I don't travel anymore.

Occasionally, you know, friends come through Sri Lanka. But, you know, talking about the distinguished science fiction writers, I've got a long email about Stanislas Lem. Now, if Lem wrote in English, none of us would have had a chance.

I'm not familiar with his work. Has it been translated? Oh, yes. A bunch of it has been translated. And some of it has been filmed. Solaris, an extremely interesting film. Yes, although I do hear that the original Russian film was far superior to the recent American one. That's what I gather.

I've seen Tarkovsky's film, the Russian one, but I haven't seen the American one. I hardly see any films nowadays. I get a few DVDs. I'm happy to say I've got the DVDs of Lord of the Rings, the first two out. I knew Tolkien quite well, well, fairly well, and I'm very pleased to see this extraordinary revival

of interest in his work. Tremendous success. Let me tell you one of my clearest memories of Tolkien. I was sitting next to him at lunch once, and he pointed to his editor at the end of the table, a very small man, and said, that's where I got the idea for The Hobbits. That's a great story. Well, that would make a whole other wonderful interview to do with you sometime. I wonder about the other greats in science fiction, the people who were your contemporaries and colleagues,

the Asimov and Heinlein and Bradbury, who, of course, is still with us. You do certainly have your place in that pantheon of the greats of science fiction of the 20th century and the 21st. Do you ever ponder that? I mean, these were your friends, weren't they? Oh, yes. You know, one nice thing about the science fiction world, I don't recall any really bad enmities. We all seem, possibly because we were a beleaguered minority and had to stand together.

If you haven't read that much lately, it's difficult to talk to you about how science fiction has changed over the years. But certainly the character of science fiction has changed a great deal. Well, even the cyberpunk sort of novels are almost passé now. But a lot has happened since the period that a lot of people still refer to as the Golden Age, when you and the others I mentioned were very active. Yes, and none of us are around now, but the extraordinary exception is Jack Williamson, who's just celebrating not his 75th birthday, but the 75th anniversary of his first published book. Oh, my. That's incredible.

You said you are reading Locus, so you are keeping somewhat abreast of what's happening in the science fiction world. Does it seem that it is as lively or as important as it was 30, 40 years ago? Well, it's changed, of course, because so much has happened that we discussed. So much has happened that we discussed. Much of the science fiction I grew up with is no ancient history in the real world. Well, the best of it, of course, still holds up very, very well, I can assure you. And, of course, a lot of your stories have places very, very firmly ensconced in that group. One of those questions that I'm sure you've been asked something like 6.02 times 10 to the 23rd times.

What among your works are your favorites? Well, I change from time to time, but the Songs of Distant Earth I think is the one I'm fondest of, although my best is probably Childhood's End, he's the one everybody tells me. And The City and the Stars, too, is that sort of trio. I wouldn't say I'm fond of one more than the other. It's just, you know, my attitude changes from time to time.

I suppose that the way most people who would not call themselves science fiction readers, the way that they know you the best, of course, is 2001, followed, at least on the screen, by 2010. And, of course, for those of us who've read them, a couple of other books. Are they also sort of up there in your estimation, or do you put them below the childhood? Oh, no, I'm very happy. I've just had an email from Stanley's brother-in-law,

and they're planning to get...let me just check on the screen. Oh, it's switched off. Stanley Kubrick, of course. Yeah, they're digging up some old black-and-white footage that was made when we were making the film, and the BBC's going to do something on this. We still have a popular science magazine from, must have been about 1967, with wonderful photographs of the sets that Stanley Kubrick built. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yes, there's a lot of tremendous amount of coverage in the book,

called Filming the Future. We'll hear more from the late Arthur C. Clarke after a break. This is Planetary Radio. I'm Sally Ride. After becoming the first American woman in space, I dedicated myself to supporting space exploration and the education and inspiration of our youth. That's why I formed Sally Ride Science, and that's why I support the Planetary Society. The Society works with space agencies around the world and gets people directly involved with real space missions. It takes a lot to create exciting projects like the first solar sail,

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That's planetary.org slash radio. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. We are paying tribute to Sir Arthur Clark. He passed away in his beloved Sri Lanka last week at the age of 90. NASA Associate Administrator Alan Stern told me that Arthur showed us the way. There is endless evidence that Arthur continued to do this right up to his death. Here is more of my 2003 conversation with him.

You did send email making some very intriguing comments about the new novel you're working on. Well, I'm always glad to get a commercial. The novel is called The Last Theorem, and it's about really Fermat's theorem, which baffled mathematicians for 300 years. It's one of the simplest things you can imagine. Of course, everybody knows the relationship that two squares can be added together to

give us a third square. The best example is, you know, three squared plus 4 squared equals 5 squared, okay? But the problem is, does this happen for any higher powers? Can you have two cubes adding up to a third cube? And there's even no obvious reason why this shouldn't happen, since there's an infinite number of squares that do this. Well, Fermat himself, about 300 years ago, said he'd found a wonderful proof that no such relationships could exist. But it was too big to go in the margin of this book.

And for 300 years, mathematicians have been trying to find this proof. And in the last decade, a young Englishman, Andrew Wiles, did discover a proof. His proof is about 150 pages long. So obviously it couldn't have been the proof that Fermat said he'd got. Anyway, it's a great mystery. And my novel, which takes place in, which opens in Ceylon, it's Sri Lanka, which is unusual for my novels. As you said, in space, it begins here in Sri Lanka, but ends up on Mars. And there's a very young Tamil mathematician who finds a simple proof of Fermat's last theorem.

And I've written about a quarter of it now. And that's my main project, the last theorem. You know, I do remember one other novel of yours in which Sri Lanka played a very important part, and it's a concept that you've been very excited about for many years, the space elevator. Yes, that is now taken more and more seriously, particularly since we have the material C C60, carbon 60, which would make it possible. And here's an amazing coincidence, which I've mentioned many times already.

When I recorded the Founders of Paradise on an old 12-inch record, you remember then? Sure. Well, the one thing about those records, there was a lot of room on the back for sleeve notes. And the sleeve notes with a picture of the elevator were done by Buckminster Fuller himself. Oh, no kidding. And he never lived to see the discovery of the material named after him that would make it possible. Isn't that an extraordinary thing? That absolutely is.

Of course, the material would be a C60, also known as fullerenes. Exactly, exactly. That is a nice lead-in to what maybe can be the last topic that we'll pick up in this short conversation. The last time we spoke, which was during the Planetary Society's Planet Fest in 1999, I closed by asking you, since you have some success as a futurist and visionary, I wondered where you would point to, what you would have us watch for something that might be truly revolutionary. And at that time you said, keep an eye on what's happening with vacuum energy, that odd quantum effect. I wondered, do you have any other thoughts you might want to add to that?

I still take that quite seriously and think we should keep an eye on it. We're pretty sure the energy is there. Whether it can be tapped is another question. Whether it should be tapped is yet another. I'm always fond of quoting, I think it was Larry Niven, I'm not quite sure who said, that supernovae are industrial accidents. Well, I hope it's not an inevitable result of civilization. I trust not.

We should let you go. Would you like to hazard a guess as to when, if all goes well, this new novel, The Last Theorem, might be available to your readers? Oh, dear. Well, certainly in the coming, you know, I hope, in fact, by about a year from now, it all goes well. Well, all of that... I hope to finish it this year, but, of course, the publishing schedules, you know, will determine it.

Incidentally, the thing I'm also most involved with now, and I see the new Discover magazine, which I'm not open yet, has got a headline on the subject Martian life. I'm now fairly convinced as a result of the extraordinary images coming from the Mars orbital camera that Mars doesn't harbor life. It's infested. I certainly hope you're right. Well, I'm not sure. We may be in trouble when we land. Well, that's, I suppose, in one way the kind of trouble you're right. Well, I'm not sure. We may be in trouble when we land. Well, that's, I suppose, in one way, the kind of trouble you'd want. It's an interesting time to be alive and watching the world of science, isn't it?

Well, one of my chapter headings in New York is that old Chinese curse, may you live in interesting times. Which I think is a good corollary to any sufficiently advanced technology as indistinguishable from magic. Arthur C. Clarke, thank you so much for taking a few minutes to join us here on Planetary Radio. We wish you continued great success, particularly with that new novel that we'll be looking forward to. Thank you very much. Good luck. Sir Arthur Clarke in a Planetary Radio interview recorded almost exactly five years ago.

It's safe to say Arthur had at least as many friends as there are naked-eye stars in the sky. Many, many more admired him and were inspired by his writing. James D. Burke was a robotic mission pioneer at the Jet Propulsion Lab. He serves today as the technical editor of the Planetary Report, the Planetary Society's magazine. He became a friend of Arthur's back before the moon landings. When the International Space University was founded in 1987,

he accepted the position of its first chancellor. That was the time at which he, if I remember correctly, it was at our own dinner table at some occasion, which was happening. He was around, our kids were around, we had a great time. He said, you know, the founding of the great and famous European universities happened right at the time when trans-ocean voyaging became possible. Do you suppose we're looking at the founding of another such institution today? He was interested in everything, all the sciences, all the arts, all the humanities.

He truly was childlike in his enjoyment and interest in finding out new things. And so he was a wonderful inspiration to all of us. You can hear much more of my long conversation with Jim Burke about his friend Arthur Clark at our show's homepage, planetary.org slash radio. Planetary Society co-founder Carl Sagan, another close friend, had this to say. Arthur has done an enormous global service in preparing the climate for a serious presence beyond the Earth. enormous global service in preparing the climate for a serious presence beyond the earth. I hope that the governments of our epoch will have the sense to continue making Arthur's dream, shared by so many of us, a reality. I'll be back with Bruce Betts in this week's edition of What's Up,

right after Q&A from Emily. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, How long does it take signals from Cassini to reach us? Radio signals from Cassini and all other spacecraft have to abide by the same laws as the light that comes from Saturn and all other places in space. Right now, Saturn is near opposition, on the same side of the Sun as Earth, and signals take a little over an hour to get from there to here. When Saturn is near conjunction, on the

opposite side of the Sun from Earth, signals take 16 minutes longer to bridge the gap. The signal from the spacecraft is also weaker near conjunction than opposition because of the greater distance. But spacecraft don't usually talk to Earth much at all near conjunction, because the sun is also a loud radio emitter, so when radio dishes have to point close to the sun, data gets noisy. This is why, for the Cassini mission, most science operations are usually suspended for the few days near conjunction. But that's not to say the spacecraft falls silent. In fact, during every conjunction since Cassini's launch, scientists have used its radio transmissions passing near the Sun

for two science experiments. The signals can be used to probe the Sun's corona, a part of the Sun that's usually only accessible to scientists on Earth during solar eclipses. And the Doppler shifting of Cassini's signals as they pass near the Sun's huge mass have been used to test general relativity. Got a question about the universe? Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org. And now here's Matt with more Planetary Radio. It's time for What's Up with Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. Welcome back. Thank you. I am so proud to be part of this organization that had this close relationship to this guy who was so important in my early life, in my introduction to the stuff that eventually led me here to the Planetary Society. I think that was one of the things he was most proud of.

It is nice. He was quite the futuristic visionary. I had the pleasure of talking to him in 2001 for a 2001 Space Odyssey. Special public event at the Division of Planetary Sciences meeting, talking to him by phone from Sri Lanka. So that was fun. So it is a sad passing. And need we point out that many people out there listening to us right now are hearing us via geosynchronous satellite. Guess who thought of that? So shall we talk about the night sky? Please. Mars keeps getting dimmer, but it's still looking like a fairly bright star, orangish-reddish, high over Orion in the constellation of Gemini in the early evening, high overhead. And in the early evening, mid-evening, you can also check out Saturn farther to the east from Mars,

but also very high overhead. It is in the constellation of Leo and, in fact, is only about three degrees from Leo's brightest star, Regulus. You can find Regulus to the upper right of Saturn. In terms of the rest of the sky, it's getting tough. Venus and Mercury are very close to each other, but they're also getting very close to the sun. So if you look in the pre-dawn with binoculars, you might catch them low on the horizon, but it's tough to impossible, probably by the time you're hearing this show. Please don't do it when the sun is up. No, no, no, that would be bad. Binoculars at the sun, bad thing. Do not do.

Let's go on to this week in space history. 1655, Christian Huygens, wild man, discovers Titan, moon of Saturn. Titan with all sorts of crazy news about its deep internal ocean. He discovered it. And in fact, if you go out, Saturn's wonderful to observe with a small telescope. You can actually frequently see Titan as a small star-like object off to the side of Saturn. And you can check out on the web where exactly to look for it. But if you look at it night after night, you'll see Titan move.

Somewhere up there on that little dot is a little tiny spacecraft named after the man himself. Wow. So cool. That is so cool. It all just comes right back around. Yeah. Thank you. 1996, a bit closer to now.

Yucatucky had its closest approach to Earth. 1974, Mariner 10 had the first Mercury flyby. Of course, now we got another one from Messenger recently, but Mariner 10, the first of its three flybys of Mercury in 1974 this week. On to random space fact!

You shook up your boy there. And by that, he means literally my boy. Yeah. My son's hanging out with us as we record here. You know, the immediate galactic neighborhood of the solar system is known as the local interstellar cloud, or the term I prefer, and I swear I didn't make it up, the local fluff. Seriously? The local fluff?

It's an area of dense cloud in an otherwise kind of sparse region. And, of course, this is space, so all of it's really sparse. It's all relative. But the sparser-than-sparse region known as the local bubble. I just think of it as the hood, you know, us, the Centaurians, a few others. Indeed. Growing up in the hood. I'm an centaurians a few others indeed growing up in the hood i'm an la kid what can i say all right on to trivia contests we asked you about pole stars specifically what was the north pole pole star for the earth about 5 000 years ago in 3000 bc

it was not polaris the north pole Pole stars, we now think of it. But because of the wobble of the Earth over time, it was another star. What was it, Matt? How did we do? Thuban. Good job, Thuban. I love that name. Wasn't he the king of the dwarves and the hobbit?

Thuban? Yeah. No, no. We can ask the king of the dwarves and the hobbit. We know him. He works for the society, but I don't think ituban? Yeah. No, no. We can ask the King of the Dwarves and the Hobbit. We know him. He works for the society, but I don't think it was Thuban. No, no. He was Gimli, son of a drawing.

Oh, that's right. I'm sorry. My mistake. Anyway, move on. How'd we do? Who won? You know what? Who gave us that?

A whole bunch of people gave us that, actually. But it was Rick Budzinski. Rick Budzinski of Australia. Watson, Australia, who came up with the answer, Constellation Draco. Did you know that thuban in Arabic means basilisk? So don't look into its eyes. I did not know that. Yeah. And we had, as always, all kinds of people telling us other stuff. For instance, Will White letting us know that in the year 3000 AD, it will be gamma-sephi. And then if you want to wait, if you want to wait until 14,000 AD, it'll be Vega.

Wow. I look forward to seeing that. We got pole stars for Mercury. We got pole stars for Saturn. We got pole stars for Mars. You will be able to find your way no matter where you go in the solar system. That is so cool. Yeah.

Well, nice job, everyone. where you go in the solar system. That is so cool. Yeah. Well, nice job, everyone. On to a question a little closer to home, which was, who was the first non-Soviet, non-American person in space? Non-Soviet, non-American. Yes.

Okay. You got till March 31st, Monday, March 31st at 2 p.m. Pacific time to get us that answer. And that's it. We're done. All right, everybody. Go out there looking at the night sky and think about milkshakes and pith helmets, because they go together. Thank you, and good night. They go together like Bruce's sons who are here with milkshakes and pith helmets.

And I don't know where they're going next, but have a great weekend. Thank you, you too. He is the director of projects for the Planetary Society, and he's here every week for What's Up. Associate Administrator of NASA Alan Stern, next time on Planetary Radio, our show is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California. Have a great week. Thank you.