The Infinite Monkey Cage - Astronauts

Episode Date: August 20, 2022

Brian Cox and Robin Ince look back at Planet Earth from the unique perspective of space with the help of astronauts Nicole Stott and Chris Hadfield, Space scientist Carolyn Porco and comedian and author Katy Brand. What can we learn about our own planet by looking back at it from space? The panel talk about the emotional response of looking back on earth, either from the ISS or via amazing photographs like Voyager's Pale Blue Dot, and the importance of realising our own place and significance in the vast cosmos.Executive Producer: Alexandra Feachem

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Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Robin Ince. And I'm Brian Cox and this is the Infinite Monkey Cage and we are floating in space. I mean, we're not but it's radio so imagine. We can. Imagine we're floating in space. Now, as listeners probably know anyway, regular listeners will know that basically we cooked up the ruse of this show predominantly to meet astronauts.

We pretend we're interested in other things. Obviously, we've done shows about bats and flies and black holes and infinity, why pandas are overrated, the psychic abilities of fungi, whether crows are cleverer than physicists. But basically all of that is just a ruse so we can meet astronauts and Brian can wear his hand-stitched Space 1999 costume. Hang on a minute.

The psychic abilities of fungi. Are crows cleverer than physicists? I don't remember that one. I remember the crow show. I was on that crow show and you set that crow on me. You put stuff near me that it liked and then made it find it and didn't tell me and I was on that crow show and you set that crow on me you put stuff near me that it liked and then made it find it and didn't tell me and I was absolutely terrified

yeah yeah yeah but you wouldn't remember those shows Brian anyway because sometimes we do make the shows without you because you've got a busy schedule so what we do is we just have the kind of off cuts of things that you normally say and drop them in so if we do something like

do fungi have psychic powers, I go, Brian won't be interested, we'll just drop him saying, it seems remarkable that a species capable of questioning its very existence in the universe... Well, it should also taste excellent with pan-fried garlic. Yeah, that is the line that we put into the panda episode. You got a lot of letters of complaint, but we didn't show you any of those. Other lines we often drop in, including,

accordingly, the sun has a Schwarzschild radius of approximately three kilometres. And obviously also, get that crow away from me. I have such pretty eyes. So yeah, those are the things that we just drop in. On our first show about space exploration, we were joined by Brian Blessed, who famously asked... We haven't gone to Mars! Why haven't we gone to Mars? Tell me, Brian, I want to go to Mars!

And having not really answered that question, in part due to the sheer violence with which it was posed, we thought we'd revisit space and ask, what do we learn when we venture out, as the great Carl Sagan put it, beyond the shores of the cosmic ocean? As we look back at what we leave behind, do we begin to truly understand its fragility? To discuss this, we are joined by two astronauts, a planetary scientist, and someone who is almost certain that they would have definitely been an astronaut if they hadn't just gone into other directions of writing books about dirty dancing.

And they are. Hi, everyone. My name is Nicole Stott. I am a retired NASA astronaut, though still hopeful to fly in space again someday, an aquanaut, artist, now author, and most importantly, a mom. And I think the most remarkable thing we've discovered by going into space is the reality of who and where we are in space together. And for the sake of all life we share our planet with, that we all need to figure out how to behave like crewmates, not passengers here on Spaceship Earth. The short answer.

And nobody wants to go after Nicole. Hi, I'm Chris Hadfield. I'm also an astronaut. I'm a Canadian Space Agency astronaut who served with NASA for 21 years. I've done a lot of things since then. I'm writing my fifth book right now and done some TV series and working with some space companies. done some TV series and working with some space companies. But I think the most remarkable thing that we've discovered by venturing out into space, or at least one of them, one of the things that I found fascinating is we discovered where the moon came from and the fact that it was torn violently

from the earth itself almost four and a half billion years ago. And that in fact, we are, you know, siblings, the two of us together orbiting for the last four and a half billion years together. And we had to go there and pick up the rocks and bring them back to know that for certain. I am Carolyn Porco, and I've spent my professional career exploring planets with robotic spacecraft. And I think one of the greatest discoveries we've made in going into space is what we found on the small moon Enceladus with its habitable subsurface ocean spraying into space. One of the best places in the solar system to go to search for life. But another thing we have gained from going into space, and I'm going to repeat more or less what Nicole said, she got it on the money, and that is seeing

that uncorrupted, unpoliticized visual of all of us together on one tiny little dot of a planet, and what that means for the significance of all of life on Earth. I'm Katie Brand, and I'm a writer and a comedian. And I did indeed once do a live stand up show called I could have been an astronaut, because I am a potential astronaut, I guess, in the sense that everyone is a potential astronaut, if they're not dead. So in that sense, I could have been an astronaut. I think the most remarkable thing for me, I've been thinking about this is what we've learned from going into space is that everything in space takes such a long time. Now, I know that's not very scientific. But I was just thinking like, before there was space travel and an understanding of astronomical time, like people's own perception of time must have just been really their own lifetime or like perhaps their father or their grandfather.

And they think, well, oh, yes, that elephant's really old. That elephant's been before I was even born or that tree has been there. My father told me that tree was there when he was little. And we're talking about maybe 100 or 200 years. My father told me that tree was there when he was little. And we're talking about maybe 100 or 200 years. And that would have been for a long time what most people's perception of a long time was, perhaps. And now it's like just exploded all of our minds what astronomical time actually means. And since I really understood that, I've never been the same. Can you tell?

This is our panel. Hello. This is our panel. I love that, Katie. I love that what has been learnt most from space exploration is that elephants aren't as old as you might have at first imagined. I think that is... You've got to check the rings around their knees. They're like trees. That's how you do it.

I thought you were expressing surprise that elephants are not as old as the universe. Well, I wasn't expressing my own surprise. I feel like, you know, although I am not great at physics, I've got beyond that. I just meant more that our own perspective as humans on Earth about time has now become something that we can understand in astronomical terms, rather than just being Earth bound by organic matter, being there and then dying or something like that you know what I mean it's just yeah that just blows my mind a bit really just that the huge change in human perception since we went into space and fully understood that. Katie one of the things on the space station that really surprised me was it gave me a sense of how old the world was going around it so many times.

You can see the ancient scars and how the continents used to fit together. And for the first time in my life, I thought I actually palpably got an intuitive sense of what 4 billion might actually mean. And I wasn't expecting to get that experience from it. So the direct astronaut experience tends to reinforce the thing that you've been thinking about. Well, what about, though, I presume when you were in space, were you able to see the elephants on the other side of the Earth and keep it steady? Because I know there's been a big cover up on those elephants and the turtles underneath. Can I just add something here to what Chris said? I don't think you really have to go into space to get

that kind of visceral understanding. I've taken pictures of bodies in space and examination of photographs actually can do the same. You don't get the physical. I don't know what it's like to float in space, but that understanding of just how ancient things are by looking at the tectonics and the geological processes and so on on other planets does a very similar thing. And did you experience that in Chris as well? And all of you, like, did you experience that as a kind of gut punch? Like, how did you actually feel inside when that moment hit you like Chris just described? Because I've been slightly depressed about it. described because I've been slightly depressed about it to be honest. Actually it made me eternally optimistic because the earth has been here. I suddenly could see with nobody filtering anything that the earth has been here uninterrupted for four and a half

billion years and there has been life on earth uninterrupted for four of those four and a half billion years. So the earth is tough as nails and life is so tenacious. And we can get all wrapped up in the, you know, the current events, be they good or horrible, and think that this is the only moment that's ever existed. But life, we could not eliminate all the life on earth if we tried, our damnedest. Life is tough. and i found that reassuring you know this little elephant's length life that we're going it's important to us but in the big scheme of things it's just a momentary blip that's what george carlin the great us stand-up used to talk about when people would say save the planet and he said the planet's gonna be fine they're talking

about themselves not the planet you know by the way i producer, Sash, because all she does every single episode is hope that we ask the first question. That's the first thing that happens. And it never happens. I heard elephants and I went, we have to deal with the elephants before we get to question one. The elephant in the room. You just put it right out there. Nicole, I was

just, you know, that sensation, because you are a very, you know, small group of human beings, to be able to look back on the planet Earth. Do you remember the experience, the first moment you really had time? Because obviously you're concentrating on a lot of things when you go up to the ISS. There's not time to kind of just, you know, browse what's behind you. But that point when you first could look out of the window and see the planet Earth, what was that sensation like? Yeah, Chris, I think you'll agree that we all, you know, remember that moment in some way. For me, you know, it was the chance to float out of

my seat in the space shuttle and get to whatever window it was. I think it was an overhead one on the flight deck for me and just be in awe. First of all, I remember floating there and thinking, oh my gosh, I'm here, I'm alive. This is a good thing. And then, wow, I should look out the window. And looking out the window, it's just so overwhelmingly, impressively beautiful, glowing, all those colors we know Earth to be, all those things. to say, oh, I should remember where I'm looking at when I've looked out the window the first time. I know there was water. I know there was a little bit of land. There were clouds, but it was just- You're looking at all of it, aren't you? I think you're looking at, well, you know, kind of a horizon to horizon view. And I think just being overwhelmed by the presence of it, like, oh my gosh, we live on a planet kind of thing when you're looking out the window. I mean, we know that when we're in kindergarten.

And you're right, Carolyn, we don't have to go to space to know that kind of thing. And we can see it in other ways. But I don't know, there's just something really special about it coming in through your eyes, getting into your heart and your mind and appreciating that way. And then every single time afterwards. And I'll tell you, I'm equally as impressed, you know, Cassini, Carolyn, with that picture, you know, those images we get back and you're learning all about Saturn and those rings. And then the one that I, at least for me, is the most impressive, that little dot of light below those rings where we make that connection to ourself again.

And it's so important. I got goosebumps. I get about thinking about that all the time. Well, Carolyn, I wanted to ask you about that because you've been involved in, I think, two of the most iconic images of all time, certainly from the Voyager mission. There's a very famous pale blue dot image, the Earth from four billion miles away. Beyond the orbit of Neptune. Yeah. And then the Cassini image that Nicole referred to. And it is interesting to me that of all those beautiful images of Saturn and its rings,

magnificent images, the one that really does elicit the most powerful emotional reaction is probably the least spectacular one in a sense, because it's that point of light. So could you talk about those two iconic images of Earth from a very long way away? When I first was showing that to audiences as I was going around giving lectures. I showed the pale blue dot because that was the initial look of Earth from space from afar. It never failed to bring gasps. I was involved in that with Carl Sagan, and his idea was basically to just take the picture, the pictures that were taken from the Apollo mission of the Earth from space, the pictures that were taken from the Apollo mission of the Earth from space, and just extend that concept and show people what it looked like from the outer solar system. And like you said,

it was a ragged picture. It really was. But that wasn't the most significant thing about that picture. It was what Carl Sagan had to say about it, and the way that he romanced it and turned it into an allegory on the human condition that ever since made that phrase pale blue dot. It's become a meme. It's a meme in our culture. It immediately signifies a sense of brotherhood, of being on this small little planet and a sense of responsibility to take care of this web of life that we are intimately embedded in. You know, Katie, I think you alluded to it right at the start. It's a complex set of emotions that contemplating our place in the universe raises,

because at one level, as you said, the sheer time scales, the physical insignificance of our world might make us feel just that, insignificant and irrelevant. And yet, at the same time, as Nicole, Chris and Carolyn all described beautifully, there's a profound sense of value. What's your feeling of what that complex mix of emotions signifies? Yeah, I mean, as I've said before on this show, and, you know, my mathematical ability is very low for various reasons teaching sort of slightly odd maths arrangements early in catholic school where we just did art and jesus and i was good at art and jesus i'm still good at drawing it should have just come to you yeah yeah we were often told

how insignificant we were but for other reasons but i think the difference of emotions i've had especially over the last year or two over lockdown I got into some of this stuff and you know after shows that I've done with you try to grapple a bit more with quantum physics and try to really understand it and and what I felt was excited by the idea that there were ultimate truths out there that people in the world who study these things are really trying to get at and they're not afraid of the truths the underlying truths of existence and how space works and on a quantum level on a classic level all of that but so I sort of broached it with this incredible fascination for like wow this could be really about what is the true stuff of life this is incredible and then I think I glimpsed out of

the corner of my eye for a very brief second, an understanding of what this all meant. And I instantly became really terrified at the seriousness and the hugeness of it, of how, you know, quantum physics might actually work and how that affects how I perceive my life on Earth and how I perceive everything, how we all perceive each other. Is anything real? Does anything matter? I went through all these emotions, you you know sort of in about 20 minutes and then I carried on reading carried on being excited by it came in and out of understanding and I did feel thrilled and uplifted but also deeply unsettled and worried and I got quite upset for a bit because I thought nothing I know is real nothing I know makes sense anymore nothing you know nothing matters as you say but then a new thought came I didn't say that well no I mean I wasn't saying you were directly saying nothing in my life has any value

but I think I settled on a new idea which has been an idea that I've had now that I think is carrying me through the next stage of my life, which is I think all of this tells me that we should value every single second of our own life on earth and that finding pleasure in life is the most important thing, pleasure and beauty and truth, whatever they, whatever forms they may come in. And, you know, I really took that on board and you know obviously i had to go off and have a quick bounty bar to calm down um and then i thought you know what just have another one that's what the message is see you haven't gone that far away from your cath education, you're still looking for the taste of paradise.

Paradise has changed from the ethereal to the coconutty. That's all. Chris, you put together a beautiful book of the images that you took from the ISS. And I wondered how you felt, you know, over three missions, you know, was there a changing relationship to your view of the earth? Because, you know, there's so many different ways that you were able to look at the earth and to experience, you know, different landscapes. And as you said, also to be able to measure things which we are not able to measure when we are down, you know, when our feet are planted on the earth. How did that relationship with the earth change over that time? The first glance out the window was like Nicole said,

and it's overwhelming. I was on the space shuttle and was looking at the overhead window just minutes after we'd gotten to orbit. And what I found was I couldn't see fast enough for the amount and variety of things that were in front of me. And so all I could see was what I expected to see, the things that were familiar to me. And we were coming across London. And I remember having this overpowering urge to grab one of the other astronauts and. And we were coming across London. And I remember having this overpowering urge to grab one of the other astronauts and go, look, there's London. I used to live in London. That's London right there. London, me. Because I realized I was just trying to rationalize this onslaught that was coming in through my eyes. But the next time around the

world, I spotted London and there's Paris. And you can see, wow, all the way to Hamburg and all the way to Rome, just looking out the window. And then the next time around, I'm looking for the Isle of Wight broken off. And the next time around, hey, Stonehenge must be just over here somewhere. And what it felt like was a growing intimacy with the world, like a better understanding of the reality of the planet. And every single orbit was instructional. And I got better at looking at it and, you know, how to look back into the glint of the sun so you could see where the water was reflected or get ready for a moonrise where it looks like this bulge of the earth suddenly gives birth to a little egg of the moon as it pops out from behind the planet. And I went around 2,650 times or so. And even the last orbit, I was just maybe a little bit like

Katie. I was just treasuring the gorgeousness of it and trying not to miss it, recognizing that just how privileged I was to see the world that way. Nicole, what about, I'm interested, you were saying, you know, you do hope to go into space again, but that feeling as you go around for the last time, when you know that you are about to return, I imagine that, you know, the last time that you really get the chance to look out of the window,

do you find every single one of your senses as a kind of a peak at that point of going, right, this is the last time I might get this view? I think it probably is heightened. I don't know if I was really aware of it at the time, but I feel like, I mean, I love what Chris just said about kind of this evolution of how you experienced what you were seeing out the window, because I think it's all about relationship, right? You know, Chris, when you said that, looking out the window, London, you're trying to like find some Katie's word truth in it. Like, how do I connect to that?

How do I relate to this? And the same thing is true for Carolyn, for your image of that, you know, smiling Earth under the rings of Saturn. I mean, we want to get a better sense of who and where we are, you know, together in the universe. And I'll tell you, I think, Rob, and I shared this story with you before, but I have this vivid memory, National Geographic pullout in the middle of a space issue. You know, it was some, I think they described it as this is the poster of the known universe or the observable universe. And it was this oval drawing on a white sheet of paper. And I still to this day, my mind is boggled by that in that, okay, so what's all that white stuff around that oval? Is that the unknown universe? Is that what they've

been telling me infinity is? Look, it must go out my window of my bedroom. In some ways, that's what we're all about trying to figure out how does that oval expand? And what is all that white stuff. And, you know, it's kind of our mission to do that and understand that relationship and then really come back to earth with the understanding of who and where we are. And I'm hopeful that everyone every day wakes up thinking about the idea that, oh my gosh, I'm on a planet. I'm spinning at a thousand miles an hour and oh my God, it just takes care of me.

And what do I need to do to preserve this life support system for all life that I share the planet with? I think it's like these big, big, expanding, I can't even imagine solving the problem ideas to, okay, we know we're on a planet in this place. What do we do with that information? And how do we make sure we make life as good as possible for everyone here? There is a way for people to have a very similar experience to what Chris and Nicole have described. And I think it's when you go out on a moonless night, you have a dark sky and you see the Milky Way. And if you can bring yourself to look at the Milky Way and appreciate what you actually are looking at, which is this utterly, staggeringly gigantic disk of stars, and you are on a planet,

and you know, chances are you're at some random latitude, so it's not, you know, flat to you, it's coming up at some angle. And if you really think about it and try hard, you can get it to pop and you can get that visceral feeling like, oh, my God, I'm on a planet. And it makes you almost want to hold on because you feel like you're going to fall off, you know, and you know, when that happens. I mean, if I see some of you nodding, yes, It's a fabulous experience. And it's why for me, the night sky is so precious. And I don't want anybody messing it up. Because no, I mean it because there's all sorts of reasons why it could get messed up. And there's a big one now I won't go into that I'm very upset about.

But the night sky is the only site that you can lay your eyes on that is 13.8 billion years old. And it really is another way to have that sense of perspective. You know, when things get me really down, I go out on a us actually having been birthed into life are incredibly infinitesimally small. And we were just we won the lottery. Those of us who actually have life and won the lottery. That really matters just to be joyous that you are alive, that we are all alive. And that's my sermon for today. Just to be joyous that you are alive, that we are all alive. And that's my sermon for today. Art and Jesus.

Art and Jesus. I wanted to ask, I mean, Carolyn, I think you were referring to the, in part, to the commercialization of space, certainly the launching of large numbers of satellites up there, which could damage our view of the night sky and be profoundly important if that happened. I want to ask you just to explore the idea of commercial spaceflight, because one of the arguments that is often advanced is that the more people that can experience what astronauts experience, the more people that can experience seeing the Earth from space, the better our world will be. It's often said. So one of the arguments for space tourism

is that, that more and more people can be exposed to that feeling. Do you have any sympathy with that, Chris and Nicole? That idea that if we could all experience personally what you've experienced, or as many of us as possible, or the alternative, I suppose, is more along the lines of, as Carolyn has explained so eloquently, that actually just

contemplating the night sky, seeing it from the surface of the earth, and receiving these ideas and thinking about them is enough. I think there are people who walk through a redwood forest and will start crying just because they get an intuitive understanding of what they're seeing. And there are other people who are going to leave their luncheon wrappers just trailing behind them because they just have a different mentality or a different view of nature and their own place in it. And I don't think the mere act of flying in space is going to fundamentally change those individuals' natures. You have to have a desire to be able to experience it and to absorb it. And so it's not instantaneous. It's not guaranteed. But I also think on the contrary, if everyone spent their life within a hundred yards

of where they were born, they would not understand the world at all. And the ability to travel freely away from the place where you're born and try and personally experience the world at all. And the ability to travel freely away from the place where you're born and try and personally experience the world is immensely educational. And aviation has allowed that. And space travel is just now starting to allow that. We need to regulate it, just like we did with aviation 100 years ago. We need to bring in rules. We need to see how that fits into society. But I think fundamentally, it will find its place in amongst all the other human experiences to help flesh out our understanding of where we fit in the universe. Nicole? Yeah. And I mean, I just echo everything that Chris just said. And I wish anybody who wanted to could experience that. But I also think that,

you know, there's so much more to the commercial side of it that I don't think that's what we're trying to get at now in terms of, you know, the overall motivation of lifting industrial things off the planet, allowing us to, you know, turn Earth into more of the paradise that we'd all like it to be, you know, by utilizing space that way. But I feel like what Carolyn, what you said, and I would say Katie, is something we have to look for everywhere. I mean, I try to find it when I'm sitting out in my backyard now or looking out the window or hanging out with my dogs or not even the night sky, but standing in the dirt and looking up at the blue sky, right? And thinking, oh my gosh, you know, we stand, we look up and it looks like that blue goes on forever and it seems like it's just

doing its thing. And we know from that view we've had from space with our own eyes and with our robots that that is a veil thin layer of blue. And so how do we bring that into our consciousness and our daily lives? And I also think that, wouldn't it be nice right now? And Chris, I don't know about your crew. I have to imagine this happened at least once or more because it did with us. And I've heard it from others is that, man, if we could just toss those leaders we have, you know, into the space station right now with their little heads bouncing off each other floating in front of the cupola window, I think the negotiation, the reality would be very different than what we're experiencing. I'm going to take a different view of this. Before it actually started to happen, I was a big promoter of this idea of commercial interest taking over the exploration of space. But the way I'm seeing it unfold now is extremely disappointing to me and disheartening. fold now is extremely disappointing to me and disheartening. And maybe, you know, it was just inevitable because commercial interests care about profits. That's their bottom line is profits.

And they market, they always, you know, they want to market things and make it seem like it's more this than it really is, whatever this is. And marketing and science, which is what I'm interested in, and really, Nicole, what you're talking about is you want people to be educated about the scientific aspect of where we live, right? Which is to say, or the geographical, however you want to put it. Just really understand exactly what you're looking at when you see a blue sky, what it really means.

OK, that that can be addressed by education and, you know, making people aware. And like Chris said, some people will receive it and some people don't. I think some leaders you could put up in the space station. I'm not so sure that they would be so overwhelmed. And so getting back to my horror of what's going on with commercial space, I think marketing and science make terrible bedfellows because one is all about spin and the other is all about deconstructing spin. And to me, we should go to explore space to have a greater understanding of the nature of our solar system, our planets, how ancient the Earth is and all these things and understanding more about the processes that go on on other

planets so that we can be better custodians of our own. And then the whole idea, again, there's another aspect of this, which is what's happening in low Earth orbit with a plan for 100,000 commercial satellites. And there's no regulations in place for it. And they're going to ruin the night sky because you won't be able to go out and not see crisscrossing artificial lights. And that to me is our birthright. That's what we Earthlings, we deserve that.

It belongs to all of us. They don't have a right to trash it like we've already trashed the oceans. Chris and Nicole, would you like to pick up on those thoughts? I think if there's anything that human history has taught us is that it's going to continue to move forward and it's going to be accelerated by technological capability. That's not going to stop. Human behavior is not going to stop. And so then it needs to be really heavily discussed. And almost always regulations are written as an after effect. A lot of laws were written after certain societal rules were exceeded.

lot of laws were written after certain societal rules were exceeded. But, you know, there are lots of examples on earth. No human being had gotten to New Zealand until about 800 years ago, and no human being had gotten to Antarctica until about 110 years ago. And we have learned so much if we look at Antarctica, a tremendous amount from the thousands of people that live on that continent. You know, it's added to the human understanding of our planet and the universe. And so there are ways to do it, and they're never going to be perfect. And I mean, I'm the chair of the board of the Open Lunar Foundation, which is purely looking at what should the rules be as the first people start staying longer and longer on the moon,

and whose laws should we live by? And what regulations do we need to anticipate? And can we take the best of our societal rules and see if we can start over not just technologically, but sociologically on the moon? So you just can't stop the forward march of human behavior. I think the really important thing is get out and talk about it and try and get the ones, the rules established as early as you can that allow this meet as many human objective as possible. missions they did feel that they were uncertain of what the real objectives were that this the big objective seemed to be look we're going into space but a lot of people felt the ones I spoke to anyway they they were worried this was an ego thing for me just what sort of slightly freaked me out was it seemed to happen so suddenly perhaps I've taken my eye off the ball or something but

it felt like a very short hop in my lifetime between going into space being something that only a very, very tiny percentage of humans would ever do. And they would have to go through rigorous tests of every kind. And then it would be a very dangerous mission to go up there and it would be really touch and go if they could come back down and all of this sort of stuff. And that was my whole life up to like five minutes ago where suddenly celebrities were going up for the weekend and I just feel like there was no bridging bit in between where like anyone explained how we got from that to that and it just it seems crazy to me that people are just sort of popping up and popping back I mean they're only going for nine minutes but have you actually thought about any of the things a bit like what chris was saying earlier is that you could lead different people to a forest of trees on this very planet and some people would get it and some

people wouldn't so now that we have seemed to have somehow magically removed some of these i know obviously the things that the real astronauts do are completely different but in the kind of mainstream perception it's like oh you can just pop up to space now. You can be Kim Kardashian. You don't even have to be Kim Kardashian. You could just go on a couple of dates with Kim Kardashian and go up into space. So it's like, what are we doing? Why are we doing this? And I think we will, by the way, announce the results of the prize draw after the show to find out who has won that. I just wanted to say

one thing because i do i i do i do recognize that i'm very much the junior partner in this conversation but i do have a small suggestion for a solution um which is that um my son my young son looked a bit upset a little while like a few days ago and i said what's the matter he said oh mommy i'm sad and i said why he said well mommy i don't want you to go to space again it's very dangerous I said, why? He said, well, mommy, I don't want you to go to space again. It's very dangerous. And I said, I haven't, I haven't been to space. And he said, no, you, you, I just don't want you to do it again. Okay. Because I know now that it's dangerous to go up into space and I just really don't want you to go. Do you promise me you won't go to space? And I said, um, okay. I mean, I really haven't been to space, but, but I'm willing to promise you that I won't go to space again.

But how do you know I've been to space? He said, no, I've seen it. I said, what do you mean? He said, I've seen the pictures of you in space. And for a while, this stumped me. And then I realized he'd been looking at my iPad. And what he'd found, speaking of marketing, was the promotional picture of me. Oh, my.

I could have... Hey, I've got a photograph just like that of me. Oh, now the whole lid's been blown off. All of this stuff was just filmed in Burbank. No one's been into space. See, you're a bigger person than me, Katie, because if my son said to me,

I don't want you going into space again, I think, yeah, I'll let him believe that. I think, you know, that's probably the biggest achievement he's ever going to think. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, son. Yeah, I went into space. I think there are two distinct issues here. One is how do we expand into space? As you said, there are issues of regulation and the legal frameworks and so on, how we do it responsibly. But there's also the question should we and what are the benefits i just wanted very briefly to to go to chris and nicole to um to speak of the benefits now we've spoken about the um intellectual i suppose almost spiritual benefits. But in terms of practical benefits of expanding our civilization to near Earth orbit, the moon and Mars and beyond into the asteroids,

could you briefly, as Robin said, explain and make the case for why we should be looking to expand as a species out into space? And this might seem like kind of a kumbaya response, but I think if we look back, we could be having the same argument about even going to the moon the first time or even sending humans to space the first time. And yet, I think that historically, and what we have to look forward to, at least when I look at what we're doing with human spaceflight, everything about it, ultimately, is about improving life on earth in one way, either deliberately or, you know, peripherally is about improving life on earth. And I remember when I went to the space station the first time I, I had that question in my mind. It's like, wow, really is what we're

doing on the space station. Is it, you know, is it worth this? Is it all? And, and I believed it myself. I wouldn't have strapped onto a rocket with my seven-year-old son at home if I didn't believe that this was, you know, a worthy mission to be going on. And I'll tell you, I was blown away by the fact that every bit of science we're doing there, the way the station is built, the relationships, the international partnership, all of it in one way or another is ultimately about improving life on Earth. I really don't think we'd be in the place we are right now with the abundance that's on the planet and the way that we could, if again,

behave like crewmates, not passengers, take advantage of it with all we're doing in space and how that's brought back to Earth. Yeah, I think that's well said. To keep it short, maybe one specific point also is if we truly want to understand our planet, it's really difficult to measure from the surface. If I ask anybody on this panel, what's the current cubic volume of ice in Antarctica or in Greenland, it's virtually impossible to determine in any sort of real time from the surface. Whereas with satellites orbiting the world, we can answer that question very accurately every single day. So to try and understand our planet, to be able to measure it, there is tremendous leveraged advantage to be able to do it from orbit where it costs far less energy and happens much more quickly than we can from the surface. So, you know, there's that advantage to the high ground

also. As usual on this show, I think we've only started the conversation. I don't know, we still haven't really dealt with the elephant problem either. So we will come back to that at some point. To help with that, obviously, we always ask our audience a question. And this week we asked them, what do you wish you could see from space and why? The first answer we got was from Drew, who said, the Great Wall of China or Brian's hair, both monuments of human endeavour that will last for millennia. I don't think that's scientifically accurate.

My hair will not last as long as the Great Wall of China. Well, I'm going to go for this one because there's no way it'll get broadcast, but I like it anyway from Brian Ashton. He said, I would suggest the soul of the British government, but a microscope cannot be used from space. That's not going to get on, is it? England, I like this one. The answer is just England, bloody clowns.

What does that mean? England. I like this one. The answer is just England, bloody clowns. Yeah, this is a good one from Kevin. A giant food item in each country reflecting their cuisine. So, for example, for England, a giant Yorkshire pudding. I'm going to ask that. I want to go around the panel. So, Carolyn, I know you're in California. So what would be the giant food item that represented the state of California? Oh, gee, an avocado.

An avocado. Giant avocado. Florida. Nicole? Oh, I'll go orange. Orange in Florida. Orange. Chris, Toronto? I think an entire lake of maple syrup. Paul said, Brian Cox's Windows password.

I will then sign him up for subscriptions to the Flat Earth Society and Rochdale Football Club. And then you, the audience, have to decide which one will annoy him more. There we go, that's the... I don't know, I'm not going to go there. I like Rochdale. My mum was born in Rochdale. So thank you very much to our fantastic panel,

who were Carolyn Porco, Nicole Stock, Chris Hadfield and Katie Brand. Now, next week, we're going to be asking... Really, it seems very pertinent from what everyone's just said there, we're going to be asking the question, but is the Earth flat? No, we're not. Well... We're not. We're kind of.

Can we just wrap... I just want to wrap that up. Chris, is the Earth flat? No. Nicole? No. Carolyn? Demonstrably not. Well, there you go. That's it. We've's it we've done that what about katie she's

the one who's gonna blow the whistle do i have the veto that's the issue here um no it's not well actually what we are gonna if we do ever do that episode by the way brian that will be another example of an episode where you don't need to turn up we will just have a recording of you weeping that was just keep dropping that in. I mean, to be fair, actually, Brian, I'm saying all that, but, I mean, the Earth is flat, isn't it? Because if we look at the holographic principle, and we have this idea that we're actually merely two-dimensional projections from space,

to some extent we are just a flat Earth, aren't we? Join us next week on the Infinite Monkey Cage, when, as Robin takes a well-earned break, we will ask, are crows cleverer than comedians? Goodbye. Goodbye. Turned out nice again. Hi, I'm Andy Oliver and I'd like to tell you all about my Radio 4 series, One Dish.

It's all about why you love that one dish. The one that you could eat over and over again without ever getting tired of it. Each week, a very special guest will bring their favourite food to my table and we'll be unpacking the history of it. And food psychologist, Kimberley Wilson, is on hand to talk us through the science bit. What food reminds you of your child? What's your favourite place to go for dinner? What do you have for Sunday lunch?

What's your favourite dessert? Would you say plantain or plantain? What food would you take with you to a desert island? What's your favourite type of chilli oil? What do you have for breakfast lunch? What's your favourite dessert? Do you say plantain or plantain? What food would you take with you to a desert island? What's your favourite type of chilli oil? What do you have for breakfast? What's the best pasta dish? What's the one thing you love? So if you're the sort of person who's already planning what you're having for lunch while you're eating breakfast,

then this podcast is going to be right up your street. That's One Dish with me, Andy Oliver. Listen now on BBC Sounds. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply.

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