Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Star Trek Science

Episode Date: December 23, 2002

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Stand by, please. I hear those slain bells ring. Okay, on the bell, please. Come on, it's lovely. Scott Bakulan, the set of Star Trek's Enterprise, helps us get into the holiday spirit. Stick around for more of the same, and a visit with enterprise writer and science consultant Andre Bermanis on this week's edition of Planetary Radio. That's the fun of it.

You know what, Julie? Don't knock until you tuck it. See? Okay. You know what, Jolene? Don't knock until you tuck it. See? Okay. You with me, girl? What I'm talking about right now. I don't have to do the talk. Anyway, it doesn't matter.

I'm not going to talk. It doesn't have anything to do with what you got. It's how you tuck it. You with me? I listen, zipper boy. And you, girl. I'll get it to you. I'm going to have some help here.

All right, sorry. A bit of levity there aboard the Enterprise, the first of the star-faring Enterprises. Actually, we were, what stage was that, Andre? Stage eight. Stage eight, here on the Paramount lot in Hollywood. But we have moved from there up to the office of Andre Barmanis in the Hart Building, the fourth floor corner office, I should add, in the Hart Building. And, Andre, you were telling me, who are you told used to occupy this office?

Well, in the mid-1980s, as he was developing the Star Trek The Next Generation TV series, I'm told that Gene Roddenberry had this office. TV series, I'm told that Gene Roddenberry had this office. Also, this building was constructed in the 1930s, and it was part of the old RKO Pictures, famous, of course, for producing Citizen Kane. Do you ever feel like you have a ghostly presence, a spiritual over-the-shoulder guidance? I would like to think so. That would be comforting. It's a lot of work producing 26 hours of television every year. It's basically like doing 13 feature films. And it's astonishing that it all gets done, and done as well as I think we do it. How long have you been part of the Star Trek family, if I can call it that? Nearly 10 years.

I started as the science consultant on Star Trek The Next Generation in 1993. That was the seventh and final season of that show. So you came to this, I mean, now you're a full-time writer, preparing the stories that we see as part of Enterprise, the, what is it, the fifth series? The fifth series, to bear the name Star Trek. Yeah. I mean, does that include the cartoon show? Actually, if you include the cartoon, this would be number six. Okay. Well, whatever it is, it is the Enterprise series, which is, of course, airing now on

UPN and is doing quite well, from what I understand. And you are one of how many staff writers? We have seven on staff at the moment. Do you have a longer history with Star Trek because of your background as the science advisor, or are there other writers who've been with the office for a long time? Well, Brandon Braga, who's our showrunner and the head writer, he's been with the show I think 13 years now. He started as a staff writer on Star Trek The Next Generation. Rick Berman, of course, has been involved for at least 13 or 14 years. Actually, you know, closer to 15, I would think at this point. He started pretty early on in Star Trek The Next Generation.

To begin with, we should talk about your time. I mean, really what got you into this office originally, and that was, as you said, your time, I mean, really what got you into this office originally, and that was, as you said, your time as the science advisor, which is a pretty important and I think unique position, because unlike a lot of other classics of science fiction in the movies and in television, and I would include the Star Wars saga in this, a lot of people who watch Star Trek really like to see that the science has gotten right. Oh, absolutely. A big part of our audience is scientists and engineers. And this is something that Gene Roddenberry decided from the beginnings of the original series

that he wanted to try to do in a credible and believable way. He knew that he was going to be doing a television show that basically was sort of a wagon train to the stars. In the 1960s, of course, there was a lot of excitement about the space race, and the public was fascinated by all of our achievements in space, which seemed to be coming quite rapidly in the 1960s. It's pretty astonishing when you think about the fact that it was only eight years between the launch of the first American into space on a suborbital flight and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin setting foot on the moon in 1969. As all of that was going on, Gene decided that he wanted to do a show about the exploration of space that was more adult-oriented.

A lot of science fiction on television prior to Star Trek had really been for kids, Captain Video kinds of shows. And so Roddenberry decided to try to take a more adult approach, and he knew that the key to the success of the show would be its believability. So he spoke to engineers at JPL, to scientists at the RAND Corporation, picked the brains of a lot of very smart people who were involved in the future planning of space missions to try to find out what would be important, what would be necessary if you could imagine a starship, a ship with a crew of perhaps several hundred people capable of traveling interstellar distances in a matter of days.

What would they need in order to survive? What kinds of technologies might enable that kind of mission? And he tried to weave those elements into the show and produce the most believable-looking starship that he could create within the constraints, of course, of the budget that he had for the show, which was not a lot of money back in those days. I think it's a good example of what, just what a very thoughtful, smart person like Gene Roddenberry can do by thinking about what do we

need, what are we going to need in the future if this is our mission, if this is what we're out to accomplish. One of the things, of course, that you would need on a ship, as they have on any large naval vessel, is an infirmary, a sick bay. And he looked at the way that hospitals would examine and perform surgery on patients and realized, well, there are a lot of things about that that could be improved, of course. And so he just imagined, well, what might we have in terms of medical technology 30, 40, 50, 100 years in the future? Maybe when you lay down on the hospital bed, it scans you with some sort of biological radar, and it takes all of your vital signs, your pulse and your blood pressure and your heart, your EKG and so forth.

And these needles that they're using to inject patients, that's pretty primitive. Maybe they'll get rid of needles in the future. Thank goodness. Exactly. And so he just asked himself these kinds of logical questions and designed elements around that, again, with some input from various engineers and scientists. A few weeks after Star Trek premiered in 1966, Gene started getting letters from people at biotech companies asking him, how did you know we were working on these kinds of products?

Well, he didn't. He just sort of extrapolated logically into the future. He saw how rapidly technology was evolving, and he just asked himself some questions. Well, how could we do it better? And how could computers be involved? And that was just sort of Gene being smart and taking some of his cues from what was going on in the real world as he heard about it through these scientists and engineers who he would invite to talk about the future of space travel with him. And that tradition has continued.

I mean, with every one of the series, they really have very appropriately been called, and looking only at the science portions of them, speculative fiction, because some of the best Star Treks have been based on, gee, what if you could do this? And looking at some issue that who knows if we're lucky, we might face in science and technology someday. Oh, absolutely. And obviously, warp drive and the transporter, those are fiction. We don't have any idea how to go about building a warp drive. A lot of people think that that's theoretically possible, but we don't know how to build it. It's just obvious that the kinds of propulsion technologies

that we have available today are not going to be adequate for interstellar travel. So if you're going to do a TV show about a starship that on a weekly basis can travel from one star system to another, you have to invent something completely fictional to drive the ship. You can't really put the crew to sleep for 30,000 years and continue the story at Alpha Centauri.

Well, that would be an interesting series, but it wouldn't be Star Trek. But given the premise of the warp drive, we have tried to come up with some credible sounding terminology to describe its various components. We've tried to think through some of the different elements, and we've tried to stay honest about the rules that we've established for the way the thing works and when it breaks down and how you have to go about fixing it under different circumstances. And I think that that's another part of the success of Star Trek, in addition to its believability, in addition to the fact that it feels like it's grounded in real science and engineering and not fantasy. Otherwise, again, it undermines the believability of the show. And you have a lot of fans writing you nasty letters.

Absolutely. And the fans are a big part of what helps us stay honest on the show. They keep us thinking about continuity elements, for example, that make sure that we are consistent to the extent that it's possible with the history of the show. We're going to have to take a break in a moment and then continue this discussion. And I hope that we can talk a little bit about science and science fiction and where those intersect. We've already started to touch on that. And you're, I think, uniquely qualified to do that because you are a science writer as well. We will continue this discussion with Andre Bermanis from the Paramount lot right after this break.

with Andre Bermanis from the Paramount lot, right after this break. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla, Science and Technology Coordinator for the Planetary Society, with Random Space Facts. You're listening to the song of Jupiter. Those eerie whistles actually emanate from the solar system's largest planet. We should also tell you that the recording has been slowed down by a factor of over 100. When we hunt for radio signals from intelligent extraterrestrial sources, we have to ignore all of the radio signals coming from our own neighborhood. Jupiter broadcasts at radio frequencies between 10 and 40 megahertz. Radio bursts from Jupiter were first discovered in 1955.

I'll tell you more about Jupiter Radio later. Now back to Planetary Radio. We're back with Planetary Radio. Matt Kaplan in the office of Andre Bermanis, staff writer for Star Trek Enterprise, the series which can currently be seen on UPN. If you're in the Los Angeles area anyway, I don't know, is this everywhere, Andre? Is it Wednesdays at 8 o'clock everywhere?

In most parts of the country, yes. Okay, well, Channel 13 here in L.A., folks. For those of you listening on the web, you can eat your heart out if you can't see it then. We have been talking about where science and science fiction intersect in Star Trek. But really, maybe we should broaden that somewhat and talk about science fiction in general. I mentioned your book, Star Logs. Science Logs. Oh, I'm sorry.

Star Trek Science Logs. Did I say Star Logs last time? I'm afraid you did. Oh, shoot. Well, all right. I stand or sit corrected. Your book, it's a unique approach because you actually begin with a log entry from some character in Star Trek

and use that log entry that's based on a real episode from one of the series, I guess every series up to this one, and use that as a jumping-off point to talk about a real issue in science or in technology. And I thought it was a really fascinating approach and a very effective one. Thanks. And we should say there's even a little science primer at the back of the book. Yes, there is. So we can learn about wormholes and stuff like that.

I think that's in there. What is it that drove you from an interest in science that I'm going to assume was there from the time you were a child to mix these two, this fascination with real science and real technology, but also with the drama that is so character-based as Star Trek is. Well, I think that I've always been interested in both. I developed an interest in astronomy when I was six or seven years old, so I was always fascinated by the night sky and learned the constellations at a young age and decided by the time I think I was seven or eight that I was going to be an astronomer,

that that was going to be my career. And a big influence on my life was the founder of the Planetary Society, Carl Sagan. And I loved seeing Carl Sagan when he appeared on The Tonight Show years ago with Johnny Carson. Johnny Carson is an avid amateur astronomer and read Carl Sagan's book, The Cosmic Connection, which I read when I was 11. And I was so excited by that book, I just couldn't put it down. And Carl was an example of a guy who is obviously a very good scientist, but a great writer, a man who really had an extraordinary way with words. And I love the way that he used language. And I responded to his books, in large part, of course, because they were about astronomy,

but to no small degree because of how well written they were. And even at the age of 11, I just really loved his prose. And he only wrote one fiction book, of course, Contact. He only wrote one fiction book, but again, I really loved that novel. And I think that when that novel came out, that was around the time that I thought, you know, hey, maybe I could try my hand at writing fiction. I had a minor in English literature in college. I took a literature class every semester just because I love to read. I love reading fiction. I loved a lot of science fiction as a kid. I read all of the greats,

Ray Bradbury being my favorite, Heinlein, of course, Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke. So I was a big fan of science fiction from the get-go as well, and it was just a matter of time before I decided that maybe I could try my hand at this. I was a pretty good technical writer, I discovered in college. I was probably about 30 years old before I finally worked up the courage to try my hand at fiction and actually show it to somebody. years old before I finally worked up the courage to try my hand at fiction and actually show it to somebody. All scientists have to write because it's publish or perish for most of them, but very few of them are good storytellers. And I think that's certainly one way that you could

describe Carl Sagan. You've obviously made that transition as well. I mean, you are a storyteller. Which comes first? When you sit down with a concept for a Star Trek script? Is the story, are the characters at the core of that? Or how often is it, hey, let's explore this concept in science? Well, it happens in different ways. It's hard to pin down the origins of an idea sometimes. And a lot of my stories start with an image, just a little picture in my head, and I try to come up with some kind of story around it. Sometimes they start with an aspect of real life. I wrote a script for an episode of Enterprise that aired a few weeks ago called The Communicator.

And Rick and Brandon had wanted to do a story that involved an alien vessel that we had aboard Enterprise that has a cloaking device and something that we could use in sort of this stealth mode to carry out some mission. And they asked me to think about, well, what kind of a thing might we use this ship for? Let's come up with something fun and unexpected.

And I thought about, well, Hoshi gets trapped behind enemy lines on some alien planet that's at war or or we're taking on some big bad alien ship, and they knock out our weapons, and in order to repair them, we've got to take this little stealth ship into their stronghold, and so we've got to use its cloaking device to sneak our way in there. But that all felt kind of a little familiar and a little predictable. And then one day I drove home at the end of the day on Friday and realized I didn't have my cell phone with me. And it wasn't in the car.

I looked under the car. I looked in the bedroom, the living room, so on. Couldn't find it. Well, gosh, I must have lost it at the office. Come back to the office Monday. It's not in my office. It's not in Brandon's office. It's not in anybody else's office.

I tried to call it. Didn't hear the ring. And I'm thinking, oh, you know, I stopped at the grocery store on the way home Friday night. What if it fell out of my pocket at the grocery store parking lot? Somebody found it and they're calling Bolivia, you know, I mean, the $3,000 bill. So naturally I canceled it. But at any rate, I thought, hey, here's an idea for a story. The captain and some other members of the crew go down to a planet, and one of them loses their communicator. And it's a pre-war planet.

It's a world that doesn't have technologies advanced at ours, but if somebody finds it, they could potentially take it apart, and it could change the course of history on this world. So I thought, hey, there's a reason to go back in this cloaked ship. The fun of this story, I think, in terms of the theme of the story, was Archer's growing realization that we have to tread very carefully when we're dealing with worlds that are technologically sophisticated, but not quite as far along as us. I have the feeling, and in fact, you've talked about this a little bit in the past,

that when it comes down to a decision between science we know is believable and a good story, story's probably going to win? Generally speaking, if it's a really strong story. But, you know, most of the time I find that I can usually make the science work in the context of the story. If nothing else, at least we've shown a little bit of scientific reasoning. We've come up with a kind of a theory or a model that makes a certain kind of sense if you can buy the premise

and I think part of the fun of the show is actually sort of stretching the boundaries of science and suggesting, putting out into the world these somewhat radical ideas and I think it's kind of fun that we from time to time get scientists to say wait a minute, that know, that's crazy. That's impossible.

But on the other hand, maybe not, or at least maybe, you know, to give people enough information there to actually seriously think about it a little bit. Well, certainly some of the more modest things that have showed up in Star Trek. You were talking earlier about sick bands, some of the diagnostic instruments and non-contact instruments. You just point it and there's a little blue light and you say, oh, well, you've got tuberculosis or something. These have started to appear. The person actually said, the person developing them said, yes, these are very much like you might have seen in a Star Trek episode. So I wonder to what degree Star Trek, which came first, the fact of the fiction in some cases,

I wonder how many of these things are around us, like flip phones, that somebody, some engineer, had the bright idea of saying, I can make that work. I heard a story that the engineer at Motorola who developed the original flip phone said that, oh, he absolutely was thinking of the Star Trek communicator when he came up with that design, that he was a fan of the show as a kid, and he said, oh, it should flip open like a Star Trek communicator. Wouldn't that be cool? So certainly the design elements of the show have crept into our modern world, which I think is a lot of fun. But ultimately, the great thing about Star Trek and good science fiction generally is

that it stretches the imagination. It makes people ask questions. I introduced a little element in an episode of Enterprise that will be on in a few weeks. Dr. Phlox took the delivery of a new high-powered microscope for the sick bay. And Brandon Braga, who wrote the episode, asked me to come up with an interesting little high-tech microscope for this episode. What are we going to call it? And I thought, well, you know, the most powerful microscopes we have today are electron microscopes. I thought, well, how about a neutron microscope? And I thought, well, that's kind of fun because neutrons potentially might be a good particle to use

to generate images on an atomic scale. Because they are not charged particles, they don't interact with matter in the same way that electrons do. But because they are not charged particles, there's a big question as to, well, how would one focus a beam of neutrons in the same way that we do in an electron microscope where you've got these coils of magnets that basically act like lenses to tune these beams of electrons.

And I suspect that a lot of people who are familiar with the workings of electron microscopes who watch this episode and hear the term neutron microscope will say, oh, neutron microscope, that's impossible. You can't do that. Neutrons are neutral particles, don't they now? How are you going to focus a beam of neutrons? But maybe then they'll stop and think, well, wait a minute. That's kind of an interesting idea.

Is there some way to collimate a beam of neutrons? But maybe then they'll stop and think, well, wait a minute. That's kind of an interesting idea. Is there some way to collimate a beam of neutrons? Is there some way to maybe scatter them or, you know, do some sort of grazing incidence optics that could allow us to create a microscope using a beam of neutrons? And if that's the case, would it have an advantage over an electron microscope? Maybe not. Maybe that idea is crazy. Maybe it will go nowhere.

But it's fun to kind of challenge the more scientifically literate members of the audience to at least stretch their imaginations, think a little bit about some different possibilities, and question some of their assumptions. I wish we could go on for an hour because it would be fascinating just to talk about so many interesting ramifications of the Star Trek myth, the Star Trek phenomenon.

But for you, I mean, just listening to you and walking around the set with you a little bit, you're obviously having a good time here. I'm having a great time. You know, the thing that's always been fun for me in any of the work that I've done and just in life generally is exploring. in any of the work that I've done and just in life generally is exploring. And being a writer, especially a science fiction writer, is an opportunity to let your mind explore, to think about different possibilities for our world, different futures. David Brin, who's a terrific science fiction writer,

I'm sure a lot of your listeners know, is somebody that I know who really enjoys Star Trek and loves Enterprise, and he told me recently that the best thing about Enterprise is that it's the only show on television that says that our kids are going to be better than we are. It's a show that says that the future is going to be a bright future if that's what we choose to build. And it's just great to be a part of a television show that is putting that idea out into the world, especially these days. into the world, especially these days. And I think it has proven itself for many, many decades now as a vision that millions of people around the world have taken to,

and we have folks like you to thank for that. We've been talking with Andre Bermanis, who is a staff writer for Enterprise, the Star Trek series, and I do highly recommend your book, Star Logs. Science Logs. Science Logs. I did it again. Science Logs, which is available still from Amazon. It's been out for a few years now, hasn't it? Yes.

Yeah, it's a very fine book, whether you're a Star Trek fan or not. If you're a fan of science and technology, I do recommend it. And, Andre, thanks very much for spending the time with us. It was my pleasure, Matt. Thank you. I commend it. And, Andre, thanks very much for spending the time with us. It was my pleasure, Matt. Thank you. Whoever built it had plenty of time to locate the signal and then go back.

It was bad long before there. Is that it? Can you stand the bell, please? The first line was wrong, if I'm not mistaken. Either that or it was the Shatner pause I put in. Take us off, Brady. Every once in a while you do that, you think, man, he was great. Yeah.

He didn't know a single thing. I believe that. His pauses. Yeah. I'm Emily, back with random space facts. Some of Jupiter's radio signals last one or two seconds and sound like waves crashing on a beach. last one or two seconds and sound like waves crashing on a beach.

Others are popping and snapping signals lasting only a few milliseconds. Jupiter does not always broadcast these signals. The likelihood of observing Jupiter's radio emissions depends on what part of Jupiter is facing Earth at the time. This means that Jupiter isn't emitting radio waves in all directions. Instead, Jupiter sends beams of radio signals into space. Are these signals signs of intelligent life on Jupiter? Sadly, it's not very likely. Scientists believe that the radio signals are caused by charged particles traveling through Jupiter's powerful magnetic field.

The radio signals are more likely to be observed if Io is in certain positions in its orbit around Jupiter. Io's volcanoes spew charged particles into space, and it is possible that these particles disturb Jupiter's magnetic field, causing some radio emissions. But there are still a lot more questions than answers about Jupiter's radio broadcasts. Join me for more random space facts on next week's show. Here's Matt with more Planetary Radio. We've reached the end of another Planetary Radio, but we don't want to finish before we visit once more with Bruce Betts.

Dr. Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. Bruce, welcome back. Thank you very much. And you're going to tell us what's up, which of course is the name of this segment, What's Up in the Sky? Indeed. Well, we have our friends, several of the bright planets visible for you in the evening and morning skies. Saturn in the early evening looking looking in the east, it'll be the brightest star-looking object off in that direction. And actually, those of you who might

have a small telescope, even a small, cheap telescope, typically, if you can hold it steady enough, will allow you to see Saturn's rings, one of the more profound things that people just getting into observational astronomy can see. Jupiter comes up around 9 p.m. and is the brightest object in the sky until the early morning when Venus comes up. And it will be in the southeast shortly after dawn and is brighter than any other natural object but the sun and the moon. And you can see Mars much dimmer and reddish just to the right of Venus. Now, normally we would go on to talk about, you know, something that's happening, news of what's going on in one of the Planetary Society projects or something tied to a society interest. But we're going to reverse order here a little bit and go to this day or this week in space history. And

there is a tie-in here, folks, so stay tuned to find out what it is. What is the anniversary this week? Well, the trick is that when I first state this, it doesn't sound much like space history. It sounds more like weapons technology history, but those are often related. And if you take the broad view, December 25, 1956, saw the first missile launch from underwater, from 30 meters under the water, submerged on a stand, launched by the Soviets as part of their Black Sea fleet. So what's the tie-in? Well, the Planetary Society actually has flown one test flight and will now try to fly the first solar sail in space, will utilize a former Soviet,

now Russian, ICBM that will be launched from a submarine underwater to launch it into orbit around the Earth. So rather a change than what was originally envisioned by the people doing that first test of a missile launching from underwater, now hopefully lofting the first solar sail in orbit. Solar sail, of course, a propulsion technology that has never been tested in space but has always been theorized and uses the actual pressure of light that works in the vacuum of space to actually create enough pressure to push something along. Beyond the concept of the solar sail, which is wonderful and exciting in itself, that

is, in fact, one of the things I love most about this project, that it is sort of the ultimate in swords into plowshares, and what a nice time of year to talk about that. It is indeed. It's swords into spacecraft. And we've had one launch already. There were problems with the launch vehicle once it got up there pretty high, but this was the test. And our executive director, Lou Friedman, he actually got to see this launch from the submarine, right, from some distance off? He did indeed. He went out on a Russian Navy

vessel as one of the observers and was able to watch it launch, again, from a submarine that was actually submerged and watched it briefly before it disappeared into the clouds. They had very low cloud deck that particular day and was even on the phone live with us back in the operations headquarters here at the Planetary Society in Pasadena and conveying the excitement of it all. So an exciting different way to do things. And so what we hope, of course, is that sometime in the new year that's about to begin, the year of 2003, there will be a new space anniversary for us to celebrate,

and that will be this launch of the first solar sail. Right, exactly. Bruce, that's all the time we've got for this week. Thanks again. I know you'll join us again for more of What's Up on next week's Planetary Radio. Alright, thanks a lot. And if people want to learn more about the solar sail, come to Planetary.org. Bruce, have a great holiday. Thanks, you too. Join us here again next week for the last Planetary Radio installment of 2002.

All of us wish you the very happiest of holidays. Planetary Radio is a production of the Planetary Society, which is solely responsible for its content. Our producer is Matt Kaplan. Other contributors include Charlene Anderson, Monica Lopez, and Jennifer Vaughn. The executive producer is Dr. Louis Friedman. This edition of Planetary Radio is copyrighted by the Planetary Society. All rights are reserved.

Your questions and comments are always welcome. Write to planetaryradio at planetary.org.