Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Special Edition: Planetary Society's 25th Anniversary Gala

Episode Date: November 14, 2005

The Planetary Society celebrates 25 years with 300 close friends, including Ray Bradbury and Bill Nye. Also, a new What's Up space trivia contest.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The stars come out for an anniversary party this week on Planetary Radio. Hi, everyone. Welcome to a special edition of Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan. I'm Matt Kaplan. founded what would become the world's largest space advocacy group, the Planetary Society. Not a bad reason to celebrate, is it? Last Saturday evening, 300 people rode elevators to a restaurant high atop Santa Anita Racetrack in Arcadia, California. They were welcomed by Master of Ceremonies Bill Nye, you know, the science guy.

I'd like to welcome everyone, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, kids of all ages, for supporting our mission of the Planetary Society, which is to explore other worlds and to seek other life. So if there is other life here, if there are aliens or extraterrestrials, welcome. I see some hands. And I don't see my old boss, which I always wondered. But I understand most of those people, most of those entities, rather, are invisible. And we had the event here, I'm sure you all realize, we had it at the racetrack to give the aliens and the extraterrestrials a place to land. Interplanetary travel, as many of you know, as you're involved in space exploration and so on, is very difficult. And after making the interplanetary journey, we did not want any of these entities to have to then drive in L.A. traffic.

Planetary Society Executive Director Lou Friedman paid tribute to his co-founding partners as he reminisced about the crazy concept they brought him two and a half decades ago. First of all, I want to recognize and acknowledge the great role that Carl Sagan and Bruce Murray had in really founding this society. When they broached the idea to me, I didn't understand a bit what they were talking about. It turned out later everything they said was wrong. But the idea of working for these two gentlemen I knew was the right thing, and I was right about that. NASA was represented by Associate Administrator Scott Pace, who read a letter from his boss. I'm delighted to extend my congratulations on the special occasion of the Planetary Society's silver anniversary. Your visionary organization, established by Bruce

Murray, Louis Friedman, and Carl Sagan, has worked wonders in stimulating the interest and active participation of people throughout the world in innovative efforts to advance exploration of the solar system and the search for extraterrestrial life. I'm very proud to be a longtime member of your organization and have participated in the Planetary Society's 2004 study on developing a strategy for extending human presence into the solar system. I'm quite excited about what we can soon accomplish, helped along the way by the Planetary Society's public outreach efforts, and in a relatively short amount of time, I believe people around the globe will be able to look up at a new moon

and with the aid of a strong telescope, some stargazing, if you will, be able to see the glimmering lights of a research station on the lunar surface. They will engage at that station in all kinds of explorations and research of the universe, all kinds of explorations and research of the universe, but also other astronauts elsewhere will be engaged in readying a 500-ton spaceship for mankind's first voyage to Mars. When our first pioneering astronauts begin the exploration of the Red Planet, I certainly hope they bring along a copy of the Martian Chronicles. And like many of NASA's astronauts, science engineers,

Mr. Bradbury's remarkable novelists and short stories have helped inspire me on the path that I took in life. And again, my best wishes to the staff and members and supporters of Planetary Society sincerely, Michael D. Griffin, NASA Administrator. Thank you. Anyone puzzled by Dr. Griffin's mention of the Martian Chronicles didn't have to wait long to find out just how appropriate it was. Former director of the Jet Propulsion Lab, Bruce Murray, soon took the podium to make a special presentation.

My job tonight is to award the Thomas Paine Award, which is the highest award that we can do, and it's for the advancement of the human exploration of Mars. And the person to whom we're awarding this tonight is Ray Bradbury, who is sitting up there. Thank you. The whole enterprise of space is basically fueled by human imagination. We use mechanical things, but the direction is ultimately that resides in the human spirit, the enthusiasm that goes with it. That, in turn, requires stimulation and visions from a few very special people,

and Ray is one of those people. Both with his stories and with his poetry and his stimulating speeches, Ray has been a spokesman for the soul of planetary exploration. The praise for Mr. Bradbury would go on all night, but the most dramatic expression came from actress Nichelle Nichols, who will always be remembered for her decades-spent playing Star Trek Suhura. She brought along her copy of Ray's first great writing success, one that has inspired countless scientists, engineers, and astronauts. Michael was crying loudly, and Dad picked him up and carried him, and they walked down

through the ruins toward the canal. The canal, where tomorrow or the next day, their future wives would come up in a boat, small laughing girls now, with their father and mother. The night came down around them then, and there were stars. But Timothy couldn't find Earth. It had already set. That was something to think about. A nightbird called among the ruins as they walked. Dad said, your mother and I will try to teach you. Perhaps we'll fail.

I hope not. We've had a good lot to see and learn from. We planned this trip years ago, before you were born. Even if there hadn't been a war, we would have come to Mars. We would have come to Mars, I think, to live and form our own standard of living. It would have been another century before Mars would have been really poisoned by earth civilization

now of course and they reached the canal it was long and straight and cool and wet and reflective in the night. I've always wanted to see a Martian, said Michael. Where are they, Dad? You promised. There they are, said Dad.

And he shifted Michael on his shoulder and pointed straight down. Michael on his shoulder and pointed straight down. The Martians were there. Timothy began to shiver. The Martians were there in the canal, reflected in the water. Timothy and Michael and Robert and Dad and Mom. The Martians stared back up, back up at them for a long, long, silent time from the rippling water. With the presentation of the Payne Award, it was time for Ray Bradbury himself to speak.

He told an awestruck room full of fans how he has been the fortunate companion of the red planet for all of his days. It was a chronicle of the Martian chronicles. So you see, I was destined to mix all of these fabulous things together and fall in love again and again and again, starting with the sketches by Schiaparelli. When I was around nine, I saw the Lowell Observatory photographs of Mars, and I fell in love with The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. And when I was 12, I decided I was going to be a writer, and what I'm going to write about, I wrote about Mars.

I wrote a sequel to The Gods of Mars when I was 12 years old. So it was only natural, the progression, up to when I was 30, and I began to write a whole series of Martian stories. But I didn't know what I was doing. I went to New York, and with a lot of my short stories, nobody wanted them. They wanted a novel. I met the editor of Doubleday, and he said, Ray, I think you've written a novel, and you don't know it. What about all those Martian stories you've been publishing in the pulp magazines during the last five years? He said, if you put all those together and made a tapestry,

wouldn't it make a book called The Martian Chronicles? So that wonderful editor said to me, go back to the YMCA where I was staying that night. I was that poor. He said, make an outline of The Martian Chronicles and bring it to my office tomorrow. And if it's any good, I'll give you $700. So I stayed up all night, and I wrote an outline in the YMCA for the Martian Chronicles.

And I took it to the editor at Doubleday, and I turned it in. And he said, my God, that's it. He said, here's $700. And he said, now do you have any other ideas you could put together and we could kid people you've written a novel? And I said, well, I've got a story about a man with tattoos all over him and when he perspires late at night, these tattoos come to life and tell their stories. He said, here's another $700. So in one day I sold them the Martian Chronicles

and the Illustrated Man. And I went back to my wife in Venice, California. We had no money, but suddenly we were rich. And she was able to have her baby and paid for the rent for the next year. And we were off and running. And the Martian Chronicles was published the next year. And I didn't know at the time what I had done. So that was a long history of the Martian Chronicles leading up to a night like this. And your love and your attention and Bruce Murray and Carl Sagan and all the

other members here of this wonderful assembly means so very much to me and I am deeply touched. Thank you very much to me, and I am deeply touched. Thank you. We'll have more from the celebration of the Planetary Society's 25th anniversary, including Buzz Aldrin, former NASA Administrator Dan Golden, a space game show, and this week's What's Up segment, right after this. This is Buzz Aldrin. When I walked on the moon, I knew it was just the beginning of humankind's great adventure in the solar system. That's why I'm a member of the Planetary Society,

the world's largest space interest group. The Planetary Society is helping to explore Mars. We're tracking near-Earth asteroids and comets. We sponsor the search for life on other worlds, and we're building the first ever solar sail. We didn't just build it. We attempted to put that first solar sail in orbit, and we're going to try again. You can read about all our exciting projects and get the latest space exploration news in depth at the Society's exciting and informative website, planetary.org.

You can also preview our full-color magazine, The Planetary Report. It's just one of our many member benefits. Want to learn more? Call us at 1-877-PLANETS. That's toll-free, 1-877-752-6387. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Welcome back to Planetary Radio, where we're recapping the banquet that celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Planetary Society.

We'll be back to our regular format next week. Ann Druyan was one of the first members of the Society. She is much more than a living link to her late husband, Carl Sagan. The head of Cosmos Studios is a prime supporter of the Society's Solar Sail Project. She devotes her life, eloquence, and sophisticated passion to the exploration of our universe, along with the complementary effort to protect our own small planet. I'm thinking back to the foundation of the Planetary Society, which was organized as a grassroots association of people from all over the world

who would hunger for exploration and support it, but also as a voice in the corridor's power. And Carl Sagan and Bruce Murray and Lou Friedman went to Washington in support of exploration to remind our leaders that, to some extent at least, our success as a civilization is defined by our ability to explore, to learn new things, to find new worlds. And I remember Carl saying, when he went in search of this kind of fiscal support, who will give Columbus his three ships? And in fact, in the first iconography of the Planetary Society, there's a sailing ship from an earlier golden age of exploration.

And the idea was to harken back to those golden ages of pastimes and to realize, to be able to realize that Viking and Voyager were epical journeys that should affect our civilization and should inform our behavior. That planetary perspective, that vision of a pale blue dot, should not just be compartmentalized inside our heads. On July 20, 1969, he became the second human to walk on the moon. Here's Buzz Aldrin. 25 years celebrating the existence of the planetary society. Wow, we've sure come a long ways in 25 years. We haven't gone all that far in 36 years, however, since the time that we started going to the moon. And maybe on behalf of the 24 Americans who reached the moon,

I'm here to congratulate the Planetary Society on behalf of all of us dust kickers and those who paved the way. A game show? Some people wondered if it would work, especially near the end of an exciting but long night. They didn't need to worry. Not with a particular astrophysicist, Hayden Planetarium Head, host of Public TV's Origins, and chairman of the Planetary Society board, serving as host. Here's Bill Nye, playing the part of Don Pardo.

Ladies and gentlemen, greetings humans. It's time to play Planet Earth's favorite game show, Space Cowboys, and now here's your host, Neil Tyson. Thank you, Sir Bill. Neil then brought up the competitors, a team of young, up-and-coming space scientists and engineers faced across a generation gap by a trio of space veterans. The two sides were showing nearly equal prowess as they fielded question after question with tension building throughout the wide banquet hall.

Here are the exciting last moments, beginning with a question that led directly to one of the hottest issues in planetary science. The Planetary Society does not like to leave any task unfinished, especially something as big as the reconnaissance of the outer solar system. In 2000, we began our most successful political campaign to get a mission launched. Question. To which outer solar... First male here.

Pluto, it is. Uh-oh, we have a generation gap here. They said, was the question to which planet? And we have some, the jury is still out on Pluto. This icy, dirtball, Kuiper object. Judges, do they get credit? Yes? Okay. I think we have a tie score. We have to go to a tiebreaker. We have a special question for that. Missions of exploration. Planet Earth has not escaped our notice. The Planetary Society has sponsored a series of expeditions to examine the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary

that marks the geologic moment when an asteroid struck Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs. On the 1995 expedition to Belize, a brand new fossil species was discovered and named Carcinorides planetarius after our organization. What sort of animal is that? A new species named after the Planetary Society, Carcinorides planetarius. What form of animal is that? An early mammal. No. No. No.

Neil, what is a mollusk? This is not Jeopardy. You don't have to pose the answer to the question. Sorry. Mollusk. No. Also wrong. Carcinorites planetarius. Do you know your Latin? Apparently no.

Carcinorites. A crab. A crab. It is a crab. It is a crab! It is a crab! The old folks win! But Pluto is not a planet. You are doing a great job there. All right, sir.

As the anniversary gala came to a close, Neil deGrasse Tyson was asked to deliver the last heartfelt message of the evening. So we've got a vision statement in place. The moon, Mars, and beyond. Robots and people. People and robots. That's where we belong. You know why?

Because I, as an educator, I can invoke that to inspire the next generation. I can stand up in front of eighth graders and say, be the chemists who study the chemistry of the soils of Mars. Be the biologists to look for life in the subterranean oceans of Europa. I can tell that, and it's a real place for them to put their minds, a place for them to land on the other side of this conduit, this educational conduit. And I worry that if none of that happens,

we will undermine not only our economic health, because who invents the stuff that makes money in the future? It's scientists and engineers. We'll undermine the economic health. We might even undermine our security. But the worst of all is that we'll undermine our ambitions, not only as a nation, but as a species. And I don't want to go backwards just by standing still. The party would continue outdoors as guests gathered around telescopes under a Southern California sky that was appropriately beautiful.

Before heading out, I congratulated former NASA Administrator Dan Golden on the many wonderful things that had been said that evening about his leadership of the agency. Well, first of all, I was at the center of what went on at NASA for 10 years, but I didn't do the work. It was just thousands of people who are deeply committed to opening the space frontier to the work. And it's easy to associate my name with it, but it's the work of thousands. So in the sense that people enjoyed what they did, contributed to make our country a better country,

were inspired, went home feeling good after a day's work, I feel good about that. This is the first event related to space that I've gone to since I left NASA. And I wanted to make a clean break from space so that I could open up some new frontiers, which is exactly what I'm doing now. So it's not that I walked away from it, but in order to go on to the next step in my life, to be able to make some contributions to the American society, as I'm very, very concerned about the necessity to generate

real high-value-added jobs in this country, I want to dedicate the next phase of my career to doing that. An extremely admirable goal, and obviously you're not entirely leaving space behind. You're here tonight. Yes, I am, because I still believe that opening the space frontier is an expression of the depth of vitality that society has. When we didn't have spaceships, we had ships that sailed the ocean. When we didn't have ships that sailed the ocean, we had carts that went across the land.

Our society must open new frontiers and not be afraid. Children should see that there are possibilities beyond what's around them. And in that sense, my heart's still in space. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Wrapping up the 25th anniversary of the Planetary Society, we are outside Santa Anita Racetrack, and they're just packing up the telescopes, Bruce.

I guess you were out here part of the time. I was. I've spent the latter part of the evening out here with the telescopes looking at Mars. Mars, which is so easy to see these days. It is high in the sky. Yes, Matt. There it is right there. Matt see these days. It is high in the sky. Yes, Matt. There it is right there. Matt's looking up. It is indeed.

It's that bright orange thing, and Matt proved he can find it. Don't ask me about anything else up there. Okay, go out and see it. You can see it rising in the east around sunset and setting in the west around dawn. It is very high up in the sky, and by early to mid-evening, it is the brightest it's going to be until 2018. You can count that as your random space fact. And go out and see. You can also see Venus still in the early evening, low in the west,

looking like an extremely bright star. And Saturn popping up. Gosh, it's already risen, which tells you how late it is right now here. It's rising at 10 or 11 in the evening. Over in the east and up high in the sky by the pre-dawn. Party's over. Good time was had by all. I don't know what else there is to add except the trivia contest. And I didn't catch who's going to be our guest star on What's Up.

Well, we just have, I believe, the eBay code so far, but we did indeed have a successful bid of billions of dollars for the privilege to be on Planetary Radio. So we thank you, winner, and we will be contacting you as soon as we find out who you are. Okay, we'll have to wrap up before the leaf blower comes. Do you remember what the trivia contest was about? Woof, woof. Woof, woof. it comes. Do you remember what the trivia contest was about? Woof, woof. Woof, woof. We asked you who were the first two dogs to return successfully to Earth from space. What were the names of those Soviet dogs? How'd we do, Matt?

We did well. Rather, the listeners did well. We had quite a few people who got it right, who knew what it was. You know what? I threw away the one that had the translation, but we do have the names provided by Judy Carpenter of Albion, Indiana. Judy, you're our winner for this week. She correctly named them as Belka and Strelka. Belka and Strelka. Some happy dogs. Made it back from space.

This is a really abbreviated version of What's Up. Anything you want to add? How about a new trivia contest? I don't know. Sure,? How about a new trivia contest? I don't know. Sure, let's do a new trivia contest. In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Planetary Society and its founding by Carl Sagan and Bruce Murray and Lou Friedman. What was Carl Sagan's middle name? Tell us the answer. Go to planetary.org slash radio.

Find out how to enter. Tell us the answer. Go to planetary.org slash radio. Find out how to enter. We will award you a fabulous Planetary Radio t-shirt if you're randomly selected as the winner. When do they need to get that in by, Matt? By the 21st, Bruce, by November 21st at 2 p.m. Pacific time. That's Monday the 21st.

We hope your number's up. We hope you'll be the next winner of a Planetary Radio t-shirt. I guess I just mean we hope you win. When your number's up, we hope you're listening to our show. All right, everybody, go out there, look up in the night skies. We're doing right now, and think about how young you are. Thank you, and good night. He's Bruce Betts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society. He joins us each week for What's Up, and tonight at the Santa Anita racetrack

as we finish the gala 25th anniversary of the Planetary Society. Thanks for joining the party. We'll be back out there on the final frontier next week with all our regular segments. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society. Have a great week. Thank you.