Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - The Beauty of Space with Space Artists Don Dixon and Jon Ramer

Episode Date: October 3, 2011

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Music Music Music The beauty of space captured in a book this week on Planetary Radio. Music Music Welcome to the travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. Do pictures speak louder than words?

If so, pictures from over 100 artists should be overwhelming. We'll talk with two top artists in the genre called space art about a new book called The Beauty of Space. Then we'll travel to the Space 2011 conference for a what's up visit with Bruce Betts and some space-happy fifth graders. Emily will rejoin us next week when she returns from the annual meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences in France. But we do have Bill Nye, the executive director of the Planetary Society,

Skyping in from yet another far-flung location. Bill, you are where? In Cape Town, South Africa. And just got in, right? A little while ago, yeah. It's the International Astronautical Congress. Happens every year about this time. And this is a little bit unusual.

It's not just academia. It's not just space agencies. It's not just industry, people who make spacecraft. It's all three. And so everybody gets together and talks about things. There's a lot of national pride at the opening ceremony, I'm sure, and it's very nice. And people from all over the world who work on rockets, missiles, and space get together and talk. I think the modern verb is network. It sounds like the space version of the Olympics. It sounds like the space version of the Olympics. Not exactly, but yeah.

And so I, as the executive director of the Planetary Society, will be delivering a talk Tuesday afternoon about our outreach efforts, that is to say our education efforts for young people who might be interested in planetary science. And I also plan to talk about the future of space. planetary science and i also plan to talk about the future of space that is to say we if we want to put humans in space we have to find some way to make them last more than six months and still be useful topics like that and then i will talk about what the planetary society does near earth objects and the only natural disaster that we can prevent and I'll talk about our work on search for extraterrestrial intelligence and our coming right up our trip to the Phobos, the moon of Mars Phobos, where we hope to send we will send living things on a three year mission through the icy cold radiation, energetic damaging energy area of space. So it's exciting exciting and i know it's just about midnight there as we're speaking i i don't want to keep any longer i want to let you get some rest thank you

matt i will do my best to uh do a good job at our talk and i've i have already met so many fascinating people that we are going to connect with and expand the global reach of space exploration. Well, I got to fly. Bill Nye, the Planetary Guy. And the executive director of the Planetary Society. Bill, get some rest. We look forward to having you back in town and talking again next week. I will be right back with space artists John Raymer and Don Dixon to talk about a brand new book that collects the work of about a hundred people who work in their genre. That's just moments away. I'm crazy about space, so I suppose it's not surprising that I'm crazy about space art.

The best of it takes us where no man or woman is likely to go for many years, if ever. And some of the very best has just been collected in The Beauty of Space. The book is edited by John Raymer, space artist, and vice president of the association that published it. The foreword is by yet another accomplished space artist who happens to have walked on the moon. Some of Alan Bean's work is in the book, along with masterpieces by over 100 other artists, including one of the most revered, Don Dixon. I recently got together with John and Don at Don's home in Southern California, so that I could learn more about this labor of love.

John, this is kind of your baby, this being the book that I'm about to pick up, The Beauty of Space, Space Art from the International Association of Astronomical Artists, edited by John Raymer, with a foreword by this astronaut who happens to be, wouldn't you say, a pretty talented artist, Alan Bean? Absolutely. His work is fantastic and very well represented in the book, too. Has anybody ever done anything like this before? There have been a whole bunch of other space art books produced in the years, but nobody has ever put anything together that covers the comprehensive history of space art

from medieval ages to present day and represents over 100 different artists inside it. So it's pretty much a one-of-a-kind book. And you've got right up front in the book a bit of history, which I wasn't expecting, that does take it back to at least the Middle Ages. I think there might be one image from even before that. I think the earliest image in the book that shows some kind of astronomical art of some kind is dated to 1254.

So people have been looking up at the sky and looking at the stars for a long time. And people have been painting pictures and stuff for a long time. And it makes a little bit of sense that you would combine looking up at the sky with the stuff that you're painting. Yes, actually my boss up at Griffith Observatory, Dr. Ed Krupp, is one of the foremost archaeoastronomers in the world. And he has gone all over our planet photographing petroglyphs, an amazing variety, a number of which show astronomical motifs. People saw things in the sky and it was impressive to them. So this fascination with the sky and wanting to capture it

possibly goes back to the roots of our species. Oh, definitely. I'm former Air Force, retired now, and I was stationed in Australia for two years. And one of the most amazing things that I saw there were the Aboriginal paintings and cave paintings and rock paintings. Some of those are up to 30,000 to 40,000 years old. And they call it dream time. And they talk about the sky and where the stars come from and what the meanings of it all are. And they painted representations of the sky and stars on their rocks. And there are pictures in the book of some of the paintings and cave paintings and stuff. Absolutely amazing.

People have looked up forever. And something that we may have to come back to, a work by you in the style that you learned during that time with the Aborigines in Australia. Tell us just a word or two about the association. How long has this existed, and what's the purpose? Is it just so you guys can get together and critique each other well we like to get together as often as we possibly can and have fun in fact we just completed one of our annual workshops a couple of weeks ago in the grand canyon meteor crater

we were at lowell observatory and climbing over rocks doing things with canvases with canvases absolutely there was probably 30 or 40 works of art that were generated in that week from the 15 artists that had attended it. So, yeah. The IAAA has been around since 1982, I think it was. That's when it started. Yeah, 82, one of the original guys. Yeah, yeah.

And I've been admiring his art since about that long, too. Me, too. Yeah. Thank you. And I've been admiring his art since about that long, too. Me too. Yeah. It's an international organization with about 150 members all over the world, as far away as Japan, China, France, England, Germany. I know there's a guy in Hungary. I think there's a member in Iceland. And lots of them in England, lots in America. Iceland and lots of them in England, lots in America.

And the purpose of the IAAA is to advocate and engender the public mind and enthuse people about space. This, though, is a brand new effort, something that you guys decided to take on on your own. I mean, it's basically, is it fair to say it's self-published? Yeah, I'd say it's self-published. We had a contract at one point in time, and the publishing industry kind of imploded with the advent of e-books, and they kind of changed their mind about representing it. But we in the board, the board of directors for IPAAA, we decided that they're wrong. Their assessment is wrong and that lots of people love space art. Lots of people out there are enthused by it and want to see it and see more of it.

So instead of taking no for an answer, we said, eh, we're going to do it ourselves. And we did, and it's been very well received. How did you raise the money for this? Well, first we went to our members and said, we're going to produce a book and we're going to kind of self-publish a book and would you be interested in owning a copy? And everybody said yes. And then we thought, well, now we have to figure out a way to mail it out to everybody to post it. So let's do a Kickstarter project. Which is sort of a crowdsourcing way to raise money for a project that people believe in. Yeah, it's an all or nothing kind of thing.

If you look at a project on the Kickstarter website and you say, I like that, I'm going to give $10 to it. If the person running the project gets their goals, they set a goal like we did for $2,000. If enough people say we like it and donate and achieve that goal, then you're funded. If you don't get that goal, well, then you get nothing. And we, well, we got $11,000 on a $2,000 goal. So not bad. Yeah, so 550%. As a matter of fact, we achieved our goal in 23 hours. Wow. Maybe NASA can take advantage of this. Oh, heck yeah. Human space flight. You know, they have to come up with some good rewards. I'll give them a million dollars if they give me a backseat ride. Yeah, me too. I'll go for that.

Boy, this and bake sales, right? Yeah. Don, you're well represented in here. I think John said, did you say that you've got four of your works in the book? Yes. Not bad. And, you know, we had a conversation across this very table in your dining room a while back about this work, the pioneers in this, I don't know, would you call it the modern era of space art?

We talked a little bit about Chesley Bonestell, who's also in the book. I mean, you really, could you do a book like this without his work? I doubt very much that this genre would exist if it were not for Bonestell. much that this genre would exist if it were not for Bonestell. The only comparable artist to him would be Ludwig Pesek, who actually inspired Bonestell. So, unless, if Bonestell will not come along, I don't think so many of us would have looked at those pictures and not only thought about space travel as a feasible thing because he made it look so real, but been inspired to actually try to do that sort of artwork. Space artist Don Dixon, along with fellow artist John Raymer,

they'll tell us more about the beauty of space in a minute. 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 Siri 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, informative publications like an award-winning magazine, and many other outreach efforts like this radio show. Help make space exploration and inspiration happen. Here's how you can join us. You can learn more about the Planetary Society

at our website, planetary.org slash radio, or by calling 1-800-9-WORLDS. Planetary Radio listeners who aren't yet members can join and receive a Planetary Radio t-shirt. Members receive the internationally acclaimed Planetary Report magazine. That's planetary.org slash radio. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. The beauty of space is the gorgeous and inspiring new collection of space art published by the people who create it,

the members of the International Association of Astronomical Artists. Our guests are two of the association's leaders. John Raymer edited the book, and Don Dixon has been one of the genre's leading talents for several decades. Do you consider yourself among the good company here? I think I know the answer. Oh, yeah. We've got the best in the world here.

Most in the world. Yeah. And there are a bunch of people here. I know we talked about this the last time you were on the show. Guys who are not just fine artists, and we already mentioned Alan Bean, but guys who do science for a living and sort of art on the side, except that they find ways to bring their art into the science. I'm thinking of Bill Hartman and Charlie Colhaze and Don Durda.

They're all represented here. They are. People like Bill Hartman and the others just amaze me. Hartman in particular is such a renaissance man. Artist, astronomer, writer, novelist, just amazing. There are so many talented people in this organization that it's inspiring just to be a member and to be able to meet and talk to these people. I don't know how much you've actually been able to review the book.

At the risk of either offending or pleasing some of your colleagues here, do you have any particular favorites? Well, I would have to say, and I'm not kissing up to John, but when I reviewed the original PDF version of the book, I was just struck by his style because it is so free and unique. But this pointillist painting that he was discussing, the aboriginal technique, is just stunning to me. Yeah, he was just describing that to us before we started recording.

You had your son here, you said, is also an artist. Yes. And we were looking at that work, which, John, how many dots did you say? The one in the book is about 20,000 dots. Each one of them painted by hand. It's sort of an impressionistic approach, but it's clearly the great red spot. Well, the great blue spot on Neptune. Oh, I'm sorry.

No, no, that's all right. You can't tell one storm from another on a gas job. They're all gassy. What about you? What are your favorites out of the book? Here we go. I'm not kissing up to Dut right here. I'm really not. But as Don said, his personal favorite that got him into it was Chesley Bonestell.

Well, the couple of artists that got me into space art was Bill Hartman and Don. And so when I get the chance to look at their works and stuff, I'm always amazed and just love looking at it. And believe it or not, one of my top two or three favorite images in the entire book is Don's image, Anarchy Gap on Saturn. The gap between the rings, right? Yeah. And just the imagination behind it.

I'm really not trying to kiss up to you here, but don't let your head get too big, okay? But just the imagination of putting yourself in that position of just above the ring plane and Saturn, with Saturn off to your right, and some of the Saturn objects, the ring objects floating up in front of you, being perturbed up, just breathtaking. I will help your not-kissing-up attempt, because I've seen that piece before as well. I probably saw it. You said it was originally in Scientific American? Yes. And I'm a subscriber. I'm sure I saw it there.

It's quite a bit more beautiful and larger in this book, even the smaller version of the book, because there are two versions that we'll talk about in a second. To capture that feeling of these billions of particles, not to say billions and billions, of particles that make up these rings, I think you achieved that. Well, thank you very much. John, we're going to run out of time. How can people get the book and in what formats is it available?

They can buy it in softback or hardback. It's an 8x10, or sorry, 10 inches wide by 8 inches tall landscape version and you can go to the IAAA website www.iaaa.org and there's a link right there on the main screen and you can say, I'd like to buy a book. www.iaaa.org and we will put that link up where people can find

this show on our website, planetary.org slash radio, of course. Once we get enough of these sold to people we're going to get them out there into places like the Griffith Observatory bookstore, perhaps. Where Don still spends a lot of his time. Yes. And places like that. And we think that maybe an 8x10 or a 10x12 hardback version would be very popular. You have done something very nice for at least one of our listeners. We're not going to do this this week. It will be part of the trivia contest next week,

and therefore will be awarded two weeks after that. Please tell people what you've donated for us to give away in the space trivia contest. We are going to give you one copy of The Beauty of Space, autographed by 14 different artists in the book. And Don just signed. That is a heck of a prize. So, listeners, that will be up on next week's What's Up segment. It was too late.

We already did What's Up this week because the AIAA show that was in town that our audience will be hearing about in just a moment on the show. It is beautiful. I am about to write you a check for my copy, and thank you, gentlemen, for signing your names in this one. I look forward to going home and going through this with my artist wife. And it is truly an honor to be in the presence of such talent and to be with you at the creation of this collection that so many of us who love this topic of space

exploration find so exciting. Thanks very much, guys. Thank you. Thank you. Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. On location today, Bruce Betts is the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. Please tell the folks at home where we are. We are at the AIAA, that's the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Space 2011 Conference in your hometown of Long Beach, California. Yeah, it did make it really convenient, and that'll come up again later. Pretty cool. What are you doing here? You just came from a rover session? I did. I actually spoke yesterday about micro-rovers.

They're small, they're agile, they're creative and fun. And they're a Planetary Society project, along with Cornell. We've been looking at what you can use them for and designs, and so I was presenting it to the engineering world. And then, yes, I just went in and learned a little bit about their larger cousins and brethren. And now we are standing at the very nexus of the aerospace industry in the United States. There's ULA, there's Lockheed Martin, Boeing's up in the front there, of course, ATK, Teledyne right next to us. This is the center of the action.

It is the nexus. Yes, the exhibit hall with all sorts of really fancy, really expensive exhibits with fun toys and displays and models and lots of free stuff. Not too crowded at the moment because I think there are lots of sessions underway, so it's a good time to do radio. Yeah, I do have to comment. When I spoke yesterday, there were 11 parallel sessions going on at the same time. So yes, there are a lot of parallel sessions going on right now,

approximately that number. Kind of crazy. Up in the sky, besides all the logos of major aerospace companies above our head, you've also got planets, Jupiter again still dominating that evening eastern sky. It's the super bright star like object. Again encourage you to go out there with a small telescope or even some steadily held binoculars. Look for the little white specks next to it. Those are the big moons of Jupiter, the Galilean satellites. We've got Mars coming up in the middle of the night over in the east and then high in the south looking dim and reddish.

And we have more planets on the way. I've ordered them. So stay tuned. More are coming. Is that overnight or two-day delivery? I just got the sheep delivery. I'm sorry. They'll be here in a few weeks. Eight to ten days at least. Sure, if they don't get lost. I got a tracking number for them though. That postal service is amazing. Okay, I think we're ready to go on to the segment that you got some introductions to.

Yeah, there were a whole bunch of kids here to hear from some astronauts, three of them at least from STS-135. And I grabbed a class from Lowell Elementary, they're fifth graders from Lowell Elementary, asked them why they want to go to space or the moon or Mars. Who wants to go into space? I do! Why do you want to go to space?

So I can float around. That's pretty cool. Who wants to be weightless? I do! Why do you want to go to space? Because, I mean, you can float around and there's no rules. You can do whatever you want. I don't know. I think they have a lot of rules, actually, but you can float around.

Anybody else have another reason why they want to go? How about going to the moon? Why would you want to go to the moon? To examine the craters and stuff. That'd be cool. How about you? I just want to walk on the moon and see what it's like. See how high you can jump? Yeah, and float around.

I want to be the first one to dance on the moon. Yeah? I want to play soccer on the moon. That would be fun. You could really kick a ball a long ways, couldn't you, on the moon? Anybody else have a reason why they want to go to the moon or maybe Mars? Who wants to go to Mars? I want to see the Mars rover, like ride the Mars rover. Right here?

I want to see the scenery. And take pictures or what? Yeah. And take pictures or what? Yeah. I'd like to go to the moon because it'd be so great if I walked on the moon like Buzz Olsen and Neil Armstrong did in 1969, July 20th. Big day, big day in history. I would want to go to the moon because you could take pictures

and then sell them on eBay and get some cash. Yeah, I suppose you could. That's very entrepreneurial. I also want to go on the moon so I can throw M&Ms in my friend's mouth. That would be fun. Because you saw them do that on the space shuttle, I bet, huh? Okay, you got one? I want to do the moonwalk on the moon. You want to do a moonwalk on the moon.

Nice to hear that enthusiasm. And then, of course, they said... Random Space Facts! So there's your intro for this week. Oh, very nice. Very, very nice. Thank you. So I wandered around. I figured there was no point in coming up with a random space fact when I was going to walk into an exhibit hall

full of people who wanted to share their random space facts. So, randomly chosen, but not using random.org, just my feet, from Hamilton Sunstrand, the maker of the multi-emission radioisotope thermoelectric generator, we just usually refer to as an RTG, for the Mars Science Laboratory. So we got a nuke going to Mars again. This is a hot item. It is a very hot item.

But how hot is it? Well, that's not what I'm going to tell you. It's not very hot item. But how hot is it? Well, that's not what I'm going to tell you. It's not that hot. It's designed to generate a minimum of 110 watts of electrical power at 28 volts DC and to have a design life of at least 14 years. Now, I especially like their flyer because it is RTGs in space. In space, yes. You can just send them off on their own.

They do have a lovely graphic of it just floating in a deep sky background by itself, which is kind of cool. I didn't know they did that. And they have a special deal today. Buy three, get one free. Really? No. No, definitely not.

No. But if you provide your own plutonium, they're half off. No, they don't actually have one of these here loaded. But they do have a nice little sample design over there. So that wasn't what was keeping the coffee warm? Well, I make no guarantees. I think those are actually the RHUs, the radioisotope heater units. They're much smaller, much calmer.

All right. I'm not reassured. But go ahead. It's time for trivia. All right. We move on to the trivia contest. This is our big, big trivia contest. Tell us about the prize again, Matt. Oh, this is great. Now, two weeks ago, when we were at PATS, the Pacific Astronomy and Telescope Show, that's when Celestron gave us all that cool stuff to give away, including the prize we're going to give away in a moment, which is a 50th anniversary First Scope. Now, you can buy a First Scope, but you can't buy, I don't think you can buy anymore,

one of the only 1,000 made 50th anniversary First Scopes. And that's what we're going to give to the lucky winner today. What was our question? So cool. We asked you about Casagrain, one of the standard designs for telescopes is a Casagrain design. I asked you who was Casagrain and what was his day job? What did he do with most of his life? How'd we do, Matt? Would you be surprised to know that we got a huge response, about double the normal response for this

one. It has to just be chance because a t-shirt is worth at least as much as a first scope, right? No, totally. Yeah, I'm sure it was just a random spike of fluctuation. Well, here is the winner chosen by random.org of that 50th anniversary first scope from Celestron. It is Kathleen Gehrig. Kathleen Gehrig, a first-time winner, I believe, from Osprey, Florida. Kathleen said Laurent Casagrand was a Catholic priest. Indeed, he was. And there are all kinds of wonderful stories about this guy.

It wasn't really attributed to him until fairly recently after a lot of research. And he was just like the equivalent of a high school science teacher in Chartres. Oh, nicely done. Thank you. Which has a nice church that I've been to. Oh, you've been there. No wonder you could pronounce it. Anyway, he used to dabble in this kind of stuff in his spare time, and he came up with this design, which you've said is extremely common. I saw it. It was your old plaything the Hale, the 200-inch at Palomar. Yeah, it's basically your basic concept of having a primary that's parabolic and then a secondary that is convex that gets all your light focused just where you want it.

But yeah, it's still used for a lot of professional design telescopes. Kathleen, I must add that the first scope is a Newtonian. Sorry about that. Oh, man. Apparently I should have asked. But I'm guessing people know who Newton was, although not many people know that the Newtonian telescope was actually named after Claude Newton. Little known fact.

Now let me tell you something, because Newton comes into the story. Old Isaac and Huygens said that this design was basically, pardon the expression, crap, that it would never catch on. Newton was particularly derisive of the casagrain design. So, smart guy, but not perfect. All right, we've got another contest for you this time. We're going to ask you about AIAA Space, because I know you all want to know, where is it next year?

Where is AIAA Space 2012? Go to planetary.org slash radio, find out how to enter. And you have until Monday, October 10 at 2 p.m. Pacific time to get us that answer, and we will give you a lovely Planetary Radio t-shirt. Now that's going to increase response right there. Alright everybody go out there and look up at the night sky and think about cool spacecraft models because I know I am. Thank you and good night.

He's Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. He's going to go see if he can get a good deal on an RTG in a moment here. He joins us every week for What's Up. Give you a buck ninety-five. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California and made possible by a grant from the Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation and by the members of the Planetary Society. Clear skies. Thank you.