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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from coast to coast AM on iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: What is our love affair with Mars Rod. It's just

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Speaker 1: captured our imagination, doesn't it. It has since the very

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Speaker 1: first days of man on Earth, as they like to

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Speaker 1: say in a lot of book openings. And you know,

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Speaker 1: I think part of it is just the color of

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Speaker 1: the planet. It is this real scarlet, ruddy red, and

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Speaker 1: it looks like almost nothing else in the night sky,

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Speaker 1: and the motions of it against the starry background were

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Speaker 1: kind of odd. But it would go into retrogade retrograde

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Speaker 1: occasionally and start moving backwards and his path through the sky.

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Speaker 1: So this really baffled the ancients. And then as we

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Speaker 1: came along and began to realize the planets were places

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Speaker 1: and not gods. Back in the day of Galileo and after,

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Speaker 1: it was fascinating for another reason, because it was fairly

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Speaker 1: close to Earth. It appeared to be terrestrial like Earth,

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Speaker 1: so it was rocky planet as far as we can tell.

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Speaker 1: And of course the conjecture then, and this lasted up

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Speaker 1: until the time that you and I were We're kid,

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Speaker 1: was that the Solar System was kind of a fun

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Speaker 1: and jolly place and the other planets might be a

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Speaker 1: little a little different than Earth, but with some breathing

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Speaker 1: apparatus and some warm clothing and maybe a light pressure suit,

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Speaker 1: you could walk around Mars. And there were even thoughts

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Speaker 1: that Venus might have swamps and dinosaurs, and as you know,

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Speaker 1: the Solar System turned out to a lot bleaker than that.

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Speaker 1: But Mars is still the next best shot we've got,

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Speaker 1: you know, other than Earth and the Moon for proximity only,

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Speaker 1: Mars is the one place where you couldn't think of

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Speaker 1: going and actually establishing a second civilization. So I think

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Speaker 1: that's what captures so many people's romantic notions about it.

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Speaker 1: It's it's a planet that just since the beginning of

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Speaker 1: time captured our imagination. It really is. I think the

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Speaker 1: technology behind these robots is absolutely staggering, isn't it. I mean,

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Speaker 1: can you imagine this rod that millions and millions of

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Speaker 1: miles away. They send these probes and they're able to commune,

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Speaker 1: to kate with them, they're able to control them. It's

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Speaker 1: just incredible technology, it is. And now it's billions of miles.

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Speaker 1: I mean, Ultima Thule, the target for new horizons after Pluto,

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Speaker 1: there's almost four billion miles away with a bee and

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Speaker 1: you're threading the needle, you know you're you're flying a

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Speaker 1: few thousand miles In these worlds, after years and years

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Speaker 1: and years of travel, the slightest error can put you

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Speaker 1: way off base, either slamming into the body or more

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Speaker 1: likely flying way past it out of range. So the

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Speaker 1: ability to do this is astonishing. And even more astonishing

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Speaker 1: to me is that the computers on board these spacecrafts

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Speaker 1: are fairly obsolete. They're old chips. They're the chip on

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Speaker 1: New Horizons was first baseline in about nineteen ninety. But

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Speaker 1: the thing is that even though these are fairly primitive

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Speaker 1: processes by the day's standards, when you're flying outside of

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Speaker 1: the Earth's magnetosphere, especially the outer Solar system, which is

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Speaker 1: a lot of radiation books in the Sun from beyond

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Speaker 1: our solar system, these chests need to be hardened like

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Speaker 1: it would be for nuclear conflict. So they buy chips

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Speaker 1: that have been especially hardened by the military. They're anywhere

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Speaker 1: from a half million to a million dollars a peace wow,

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Speaker 1: So even though they're decades old, the programming is so

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Speaker 1: lean and mean and exquisite that they're able to do

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Speaker 1: all these functions with a light time. You know, one

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Speaker 1: way radio message travel time is six seven eight hours,

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Speaker 1: So it really is mind boggling. And every time I

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Speaker 1: go up to JPL and talk to those people, it's

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Speaker 1: everything I can do kind of not to get down

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Speaker 1: on bended knee and just bown my head. They're brilliant

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Speaker 1: because they really do incredible work, as now are the

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Speaker 1: Europeans and the Indians. Recently and out of Chinese on

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Speaker 1: our side of the moon. Chinese seemed to be coming

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Speaker 1: along like crazy, aren't they. Yeah, they're going gangbusters. Well,

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Speaker 1: you know, all they have to do is decide, and

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Speaker 1: when you've got a president that's either in term for

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Speaker 1: ten years or for life, depending on which one you're

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Speaker 1: talking about, you can keep kind of a stable trajectory going.

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Speaker 1: So they are bound and determined to get to the

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Speaker 1: moon with more robots, to get the moon with humans,

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Speaker 1: probably in the late twenty thirties, early twenty forties somewhere

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Speaker 1: in there, and they're looking at the resources there. There's

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Speaker 1: a lot of stuff up there that can be used

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Speaker 1: because it's expensive to launch stuff off of Earth. So

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Speaker 1: when you've got water ice on the moon and metals

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Speaker 1: and glass and oxygen in the soil, which you do,

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Speaker 1: you might as well use those things up there instead

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Speaker 1: of carrying all that along with you and now working

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Speaker 1: in the Solar system and staying there becomes a lot

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Speaker 1: easier and a lot more feasible. So that's what they're

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Speaker 1: headed for. I had a story yesterday that Russia and

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Speaker 1: China might be working on space weaponry to take out

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Speaker 1: our satellites. Have you heard anything about that? Oh, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's that's quite a conversation in the defense and space

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Speaker 1: industry communities. So you know, we've all done our share

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Speaker 1: of that. We've experimented with that. The Russians have experimented

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Speaker 1: with it for decades. I mean even back in the

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Speaker 1: sixties and activities, there was work going on those areas.

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Speaker 1: It's just a lot more sophisticated now. I think what's

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Speaker 1: scaring pe The Chinese has come fairly far, fairly fast,

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Speaker 1: and they're putting a lot of effort into it. So

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Speaker 1: we've kind of curtailed, as far as we know in

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Speaker 1: the public, most of our anti satellite efforts. Not so

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Speaker 1: sure about the Russians of the Chinese, and so much

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Speaker 1: of what we do, not just in America, not just

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Speaker 1: for the military, but day to day commerce, regulating the

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Speaker 1: power grid, overseeing transportation, banking, all these things depend on

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Speaker 1: satellites to monitor the transactions and transmit time based frequencies

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Speaker 1: back and forth and so forth. So you need to

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Speaker 1: have this grid of satellite stuff there. If they start

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Speaker 1: getting picked off and knocked out, not only do you

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Speaker 1: no longer have the high view for military purposes, but

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Speaker 1: now you also have a real impact on commerce and

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Speaker 1: civilian welfare. So I think that's what a big concern is.

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Speaker 1: And the general feeling, even amongst the people that are

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Speaker 1: more liberal in their attitude towards this is we're behind

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Speaker 1: and we sort of need to catch up, whether that's

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Speaker 1: a defensive or offensive strategy. As another conversation, what's so amazing,

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Speaker 1: rod is we landed on the moon almost fifty years

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Speaker 1: ago with our first astronauts fifty years ago. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's incredible, and nobody has been able to get close

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Speaker 1: to us for half a century. Well now they're starting

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Speaker 1: to come along, but look how far advanced we were.

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Speaker 1: Why didn't we take advantage of that? Well, the Apollo program,

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Speaker 1: you'll hear a lot of people talk about as being

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Speaker 1: this galvanizing force that got the nation headed in one

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Speaker 1: direction on this march shwords landing a man on the moon,

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Speaker 1: and that was largely true within government and industry, in academia,

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Speaker 1: But when you look at public opinion throughout those years

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Speaker 1: from Gallup polls and so forth, it went up and

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Speaker 1: down quite a bit, so the support wasn't always there.

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Speaker 1: Congress reflects the public opinion, of course, so the feelings

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Speaker 1: there were somewhat the same. I think what made Apollo

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Speaker 1: work with two things. One, it was a stake driven

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Speaker 1: in the ground and a geopolitical struggle between US and

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Speaker 1: the Soviet Union. Wasn't as much about science as it

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Speaker 1: was about showing who had the technological goods who could

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Speaker 1: achieve this incredible mission. And Kennedy chose the landing specifically because,

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Speaker 1: as advisors told him, it was something we might be

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Speaker 1: able to do first if we were just talking to

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Speaker 1: our space stations or lunar flybys, that the Soviet Union

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Speaker 1: might beat us. So the moon landing was something we

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Speaker 1: thought we could do. But the other part of it

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Speaker 1: is that there's just been a lack of national willpower

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Speaker 1: to go back. We kind of achieved this thing with

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Speaker 1: its very primitive technology by today's standards, it's amazing to

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Speaker 1: me it worked as well as it did. And when

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Speaker 1: you think we're almost as far, it's not going to

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Speaker 1: be too long before we are as far away from

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Speaker 1: that first moon landing as it was from the Right

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Speaker 1: Brothers first flight. Kind of gobsmacking moment there when you

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Speaker 1: think that and you wonder, you know, what have we

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Speaker 1: been doing all that time in between? And the truth

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Speaker 1: of it is, we spent that time in Earth orbit.

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Speaker 1: We built this magnificence space station with international partners that

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Speaker 1: goes overhead every ninety minutes. The thing is huge, the

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Speaker 1: biggest emotion expensive machine ever made, and it's been functioning

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Speaker 1: for almost twenty years. So a lot of good research

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Speaker 1: has happened up there. We've learned a lot more about

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Speaker 1: space in the Solar System and living in weightless conditions

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Speaker 1: since that time. And one of the things that's made

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Speaker 1: it tough is those short sojourns to the Moon and back.

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Speaker 1: They only lasted a week or two, didn't expose the

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Speaker 1: astronauts to the full panoply of dangers as the Solar

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Speaker 1: System holds. But as we've learned more about space, we've

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Speaker 1: learned that it's a tough thing to do. There's a

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Speaker 1: lot of radiation out there, there's what happened to the

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Speaker 1: human body, and long term weightless exposure, all kinds of

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Speaker 1: things that we have to learn how to mediate before

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Speaker 1: we can start taking these longer trips. So between that

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Speaker 1: and the budget cuts, because NASA is operating at a

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Speaker 1: tenth of what it was in the sixties now and

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Speaker 1: doing a lot more with that small amount of money,

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Speaker 1: it's a tough slog I think it was great seeing

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Speaker 1: Buzz all drawn at the President's State of the Union address.

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Speaker 1: I mean there he is really the second man to

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Speaker 1: walk on the moon, but with Neil Armstrong gone, he's

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Speaker 1: the guy. You know, he's the He's basically the first

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Speaker 1: person laughed who walked on the moon. He is, And

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Speaker 1: I've been writing a little bit about this, talking about

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Speaker 1: this year being first Men for a couple of reasons. One,

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Speaker 1: they trained together, they landed together, they explored together. Who

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Speaker 1: put their foot in the dust first shouldn't really be

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Speaker 1: as big a deal as it is in my opinion,

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Speaker 1: I agree. And secondly, I think the movie First Man,

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Speaker 1: if you saw it, really gave Buzz kind of an

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Speaker 1: unfair shake. I mean, he was different than the other guys.

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Speaker 1: He was extremely intellectual still is. He's very focused, he's tough,

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Speaker 1: he's got a temper and when he wants to yeah,

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Speaker 1: but he was extremely focused on orbital dynamics and getting

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Speaker 1: the job done. But if it wasn't for Buzz, there's

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Speaker 1: a good chance they would not have mastered EVA space

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Speaker 1: walking activities during Gemini, because he was really the one

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Speaker 1: that pushed the agenda of underwater training to make sure

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Speaker 1: that they were read on Jemini twelve the last one

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Speaker 1: to get that done, and the previous attempts hadn't worked

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Speaker 1: out very well, so he really kind of closed the

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Speaker 1: loop on that. And the other thing I would like

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Speaker 1: to credit him with is he's one of the few

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Speaker 1: guys from that cadre of Apollo astronauts. They've all gone

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Speaker 1: off and done wonderful things since they came back to Earth,

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Speaker 1: but he's one of the few that's really continued to

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Speaker 1: fly the flag promoting space exploration, human exploration, the Solar

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Speaker 1: System continually since then, year after year, day after day.

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Speaker 1: That's what he talks about, That's what he thinks about.

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Speaker 1: I get on the phone with him a few times

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Speaker 1: a year. We talked for hours, and that is what

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Speaker 1: is in the forefront of his mind all the time,

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Speaker 1: and I really respect that. Rod. Did you know edgar

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Speaker 1: Mitchell when he was alive Apollo fourteen astronaut. He's one

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Speaker 1: of the few I didn't meet, and I think you

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Speaker 1: talked to him quite a Yeah. We knew him well,

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Speaker 1: and he was a believer in extraterrestrial presence. Though he

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Speaker 1: told me, he said, I never signed anything on the

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Speaker 1: Moon George or anything like that, but I have talked

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Speaker 1: to people within government who have told me that we

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Speaker 1: are being visited by extraterrestrials, and hearing that from an

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Speaker 1: Apollo fourteen astronaut was absolutely staggering. Yeah, a lot of

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Speaker 1: people were staggered in different ways. But you know, I

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Speaker 1: think one of the things that I admired so much

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Speaker 1: about him, there's two One, he tried that esp experiment

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Speaker 1: during the flight would not have been popular if it

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Speaker 1: had been widely known, but it showed he had an

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Speaker 1: open mind and was a progressive thinker. And also he

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Speaker 1: was famously quoted as there's a quote from him about

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Speaker 1: politicians about politics on Earth, saying he wanted to take

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Speaker 1: a politician by the scruff of the neck, take him

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Speaker 1: up to space and say, look at that you said

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Speaker 1: of a beep while pointing his face out the Earth

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Speaker 1: to get them to understand that it's a delicate, fragile planet.

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Speaker 1: There no borders drawn between nations that put their artificially

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Speaker 1: and who he really just became a number of them DIBs,

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Speaker 1: especially Mitchell, an incredible humanist. Oh, he sure was. And

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Speaker 1: then he came back in the test pilot. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: he started the Institute of no Weddic Sciences. And did

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Speaker 1: you know Chuckyager still alive, He's ninety six years old. Yeah?

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Speaker 1: Is that an amazing guy? It is? Then you know

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Speaker 1: there's there's somebody who's seen it all. I've done it

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Speaker 1: all and been through a lot. If I if I

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Speaker 1: were to talk to him, I would be I wouldn't

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Speaker 1: do it, but I would be tempted to say, did

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Speaker 1: you ever think again about maybe you should join NASA?

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Speaker 1: And given that a shot, yeah, I was gonna, I

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Speaker 1: was gonna sagree, probably couldn't have. Is that why he

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Speaker 1: did not become an astronaut? It's hard to say, you know,

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Speaker 1: if you believe Tom Wolf, it's because he thought the

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Speaker 1: whole enterprise was silly. I imagine there was more to

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Speaker 1: it than that, but you had to have a college

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Speaker 1: degree and be a certified test pilot, so he had

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Speaker 1: one but not the other. And I think that was

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Speaker 1: probably one of the mediating factors. But he also loved

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Speaker 1: test pet test pilot. He loved that it was very

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Speaker 1: good at it. He may have been the best. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: an incredible eyesight, incredible reflexes, So it may have just

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Speaker 1: made more sense to keep doing what he was doing.

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Speaker 1: And you know, any of these guys, regardless of what

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Speaker 1: mission they were on and what they did and what

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Speaker 1: service they worked with, they've done so much more in

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Speaker 1: ten minutes of their lives. And I've done with most

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Speaker 1: of the fun that I can't even imagine the feeling

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Speaker 1: of satisfaction you must have. What's the future of manned

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Speaker 1: space for us, Rod, what are we going to do? Well?

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Speaker 1: What we're looking at now on the government side with

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Speaker 1: NASA is building a station, another station smaller than the ISS,

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Speaker 1: but another station at lunar orbit from which we can

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Speaker 1: start making sorties down to the surface. They just announced

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Speaker 1: yesterday at a news conference that they wanted to start

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Speaker 1: getting bids from private industry to build landers. So there

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Speaker 1: is this notion of going back to the Moon before Mars.

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Speaker 1: There are some people think it's a good idea. There's

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Speaker 1: some people that aren't thrilled with that idea because they

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Speaker 1: think it's going to slow it down. But Mars is

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Speaker 1: a long ways away, very difficult to do. Technically doable,

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Speaker 1: but difficult. And once you're there, you can only stay

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Speaker 1: for a month or you've got to stay for much longer,

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Speaker 1: depending on which. There's a short in the window right

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Speaker 1: that you're right, right, So you want to make sure

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Speaker 1: if you're going to go there that you're ready to

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Speaker 1: stay for the long haul so you can get work done.

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Speaker 1: Because humans are very efficient and perspective in the field,

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Speaker 1: they're way quicker than robots, So the moon makes sense.

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Speaker 1: So that's that's the target for NASA. And then, as

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Speaker 1: you know, the private industry, you've got Jack Bezos and

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Speaker 1: Elton Musk famously striving with their rockets. And you know,

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Speaker 1: it's a little bit like I feel like I'm watching

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Speaker 1: Destination Moon in nineteen fifties all over again, where this

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Speaker 1: rich industrialist says, yeah, I'm going to build a rocket.

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Speaker 1: Are hard to be and it was harder than he thought,

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Speaker 1: but they've both done it, they're both mastering it. Musk

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Speaker 1: is a little more public about what he's doing. Bezos

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Speaker 1: is taking a very slow, measured course. But Bezos is

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Speaker 1: putting a million dollars of his own money into this

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Speaker 1: every year. So I think what we're seeing coming along

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Speaker 1: is this to be the sweet spot between NASA's involvement

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Speaker 1: with a certain amount of public funding and guidance and

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Speaker 1: the initiatives to explore and go beyond, and then public

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Speaker 1: industry coming in behind them and doing the things the

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Speaker 1: public industry does the private industry does so well, which

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Speaker 1: is transporting materials to orbit, possibly transporting people to the

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Speaker 1: Moon back and forth, commercializing this arena, making money at it,

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Speaker 1: and beginning to build an infrastructure in orbit and between

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Speaker 1: the Earth and the Moon and this area they called

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Speaker 1: sis lunar space, so that you've got fuel depots, and

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Speaker 1: you've got way stations, and you've got robots working out there,

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Speaker 1: paving the way for people to come along and do

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Speaker 1: what they do best. So that between those two entities

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Speaker 1: and the international sector and cooperation with various countries, hopefully

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Speaker 1: with China, someday, we can really see this thing come

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Speaker 1: to fruition. Much quicker. Listen to more Coast to Coast

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Speaker 1: AM every weeknight at one am Eastern, and go to

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Speaker 1: Coast to Coast am dot com for more