WEBVTT - Racing to Space with Bill Nye 0:00:07.960 --> 0:00:13.240 Here we Go Again Again. Hey, I'm cal Penn. Welcome 0:00:13.280 --> 0:00:14.880 to my new show, Here we Go Again. 0:00:15.840 --> 0:00:17.079 Here We Go. 0:00:27.280 --> 0:00:29.160 So you may know me as an actor from Harold 0:00:29.240 --> 0:00:32.880 and Kumar House or Designated Survivor. I'm also a former 0:00:32.920 --> 0:00:37.360 White House staffer, a NASCAR enthusiast, an eager karaoke participant, 0:00:37.400 --> 0:00:39.400 and I guess, as of like five seconds ago, a 0:00:39.479 --> 0:00:40.280 podcast host. 0:00:40.520 --> 0:00:41.560 How am I doing so far? 0:00:42.520 --> 0:00:45.879 I'm hosting this podcast because there's one particular question that 0:00:45.920 --> 0:00:49.640 I find myself asking a lot these days. Why does 0:00:49.680 --> 0:00:54.280 the same shit keep happening? War, labor strikes, getting ghosted 0:00:54.280 --> 0:00:57.080 by a hookup. No one wants to be stuck in 0:00:57.160 --> 0:01:01.279 a vicious cycle of patterns repeating. So every week we're 0:01:01.320 --> 0:01:03.520 going to take a topic from the present, see how 0:01:03.560 --> 0:01:05.839 it played out in the past, and try to figure 0:01:05.840 --> 0:01:09.600 out what it means for our future. Each episode, I'll 0:01:09.680 --> 0:01:11.840 chat with an expert who can help me answer a 0:01:11.920 --> 0:01:15.600 different burning question, like why is my plane always delayed? 0:01:16.040 --> 0:01:19.560 Are we headed towards another economic crash? Is this rash 0:01:19.600 --> 0:01:22.280 what I think it is? Oh? Wait, ignore that last one. 0:01:23.520 --> 0:01:25.520 We're asking all the right questions to all the right 0:01:25.560 --> 0:01:28.920 people to make you feel at least like nine percent 0:01:29.040 --> 0:01:36.679 better about well everything except maybe the rashow. So now 0:01:36.680 --> 0:01:38.320 that I got my little introduction out of the way, 0:01:38.600 --> 0:01:40.880 I wasn't sure how I wanted to kick off the 0:01:40.920 --> 0:01:44.800 first episode, but then I kept looking down at my tattoos. 0:01:45.400 --> 0:01:49.640 Some people have tattoos of bald eagles, A lot of 0:01:49.680 --> 0:01:53.520 people have tattoos of x's. Most of my tattoos have 0:01:53.680 --> 0:01:56.640 something to do with astronomy. That's what you see if 0:01:56.640 --> 0:01:58.560 you look at my sleeve, and of that, I'd say 0:01:58.640 --> 0:02:01.640 at least half has to do with the NASA Voyager 0:02:01.760 --> 0:02:03.840 Golden Record. If you don't know what the Golden Record is, 0:02:04.320 --> 0:02:06.960 it's a piece of this spacecraft called the Voyager, launched 0:02:06.960 --> 0:02:09.480 in the late nineteen seventies, and the idea there was 0:02:09.520 --> 0:02:13.720 that if it's ever found by an intelligent civilization, and 0:02:13.800 --> 0:02:17.160 if they can ever decode this record, they would see 0:02:17.200 --> 0:02:24.720 only the best of human civilization, biology, science, music, arts, DNA. 0:02:24.840 --> 0:02:27.760 To me, space has always been about exploring the unknown, 0:02:27.840 --> 0:02:31.399 about possibility, and as the guy with the Voyager tattoo, 0:02:31.440 --> 0:02:34.239 I clearly care a lot about the new space race 0:02:34.280 --> 0:02:37.600 that's happening right now. From the Cold War to today, 0:02:38.160 --> 0:02:42.000 space has really been about flexing power the United States 0:02:42.080 --> 0:02:44.080 versus the Soviet Union, for example back in the day, 0:02:44.160 --> 0:02:48.359 or more recently, the United States versus China. But now 0:02:48.360 --> 0:02:53.720 there's also a new player, private corporations enter the billionaires. 0:02:54.400 --> 0:02:57.240 Elon Musk is willing to spend fifteen and a half 0:02:57.480 --> 0:03:00.640 billion dollars to be the first to colonize Mars. Jeff 0:03:00.680 --> 0:03:03.640 Bezos is funding Blue Origin to keep up. And in 0:03:03.680 --> 0:03:05.920 the middle of all of this is still NASA with 0:03:06.000 --> 0:03:09.360 a shrinking budget. So here's my question, why do we 0:03:09.480 --> 0:03:13.120 keep turning space into a race? And what does that 0:03:13.160 --> 0:03:16.639 say about the future of space exploration and about humanity? 0:03:16.800 --> 0:03:18.639 This is here we Go again, a show where we 0:03:18.680 --> 0:03:21.440 take today's trends and headlines and then ask why does 0:03:21.520 --> 0:03:31.480 history keep repeating itself. I'm cal Penn to explore the past, present, 0:03:31.560 --> 0:03:35.040 and future of the space race. I knew only one 0:03:35.080 --> 0:03:40.160 guy would do. He's super sciency, a spokesperson, an adventurer, 0:03:40.400 --> 0:03:43.280 a teacher, and the only adult man I trust to 0:03:43.320 --> 0:03:46.320 wear a bow tie. Unlike me, He's got a star 0:03:46.440 --> 0:03:50.000 on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the singular William Sandford 0:03:50.040 --> 0:03:52.440 n I, better known as my friend Bill Nye, the 0:03:52.640 --> 0:03:55.600 science Guy. Welcome Bill it's so good to be here. 0:03:55.840 --> 0:04:00.160 Thanks for doing this. Man. I think that most of 0:04:00.240 --> 0:04:04.440 us have a very rudimentary understanding of space, and I 0:04:04.520 --> 0:04:06.520 will I will preface this by saying, I think I've 0:04:06.520 --> 0:04:11.120 shown you my astronomy tattoos, most of which are based 0:04:11.120 --> 0:04:15.440 on the Voyager Golden Record, well pulse ar map and 0:04:15.480 --> 0:04:17.760 things like that, but that is still you know, for 0:04:17.800 --> 0:04:20.320 an actor, that's still a rudimentary like, well. 0:04:20.240 --> 0:04:22.640 You're a citizen of Earth, cal thank you. 0:04:22.839 --> 0:04:23.920 I like to put it that way. 0:04:24.160 --> 0:04:25.680 Yeah, well that's what we're going for here. 0:04:25.760 --> 0:04:29.840 So, like, what is the history of the original space race? 0:04:29.960 --> 0:04:32.280 In like a minute, And I'm not asking for the 0:04:32.920 --> 0:04:35.960 version of like if you and Neil deGrasse Tyson were 0:04:35.960 --> 0:04:38.719 in a room together, which I've seen and it's brilliant, 0:04:38.800 --> 0:04:41.200 but like, what's the second grade version of that? 0:04:42.680 --> 0:04:47.159 The second grade version is the Soviet Union was created 0:04:47.279 --> 0:04:50.640 with this idea that they would be that its system 0:04:50.680 --> 0:04:55.160 would be better than the West. And along with that, 0:04:55.480 --> 0:04:57.880 we're going to prove that we're better than the West. 0:04:57.920 --> 0:05:01.880 We're going to go into space, the ultimate high ground. 0:05:02.800 --> 0:05:06.159 So they built sputneck spacecraft and I was a little 0:05:06.400 --> 0:05:11.800 little kid nineteen fifty seven and the grown ups are 0:05:11.880 --> 0:05:15.120 all very very concerned about this. And so then the 0:05:15.279 --> 0:05:21.200 US answered the threat or the historic achievement of Sputnik 0:05:21.240 --> 0:05:26.120 by creating NASA, the National Annasa Space Administration, a civilian 0:05:27.360 --> 0:05:32.839 space agency that was involved in flying around in space, 0:05:33.040 --> 0:05:36.560 which you might think was more of a military thing, 0:05:37.760 --> 0:05:42.000 but this became and everybody talks about this turning point 0:05:42.040 --> 0:05:45.520 with John Kennedy, whatever else you might think about him, 0:05:46.000 --> 0:05:50.080 presented this challenge of putting somebody on the moon before 0:05:50.200 --> 0:05:54.680 nineteen seventy, so that became a way to fight the 0:05:54.680 --> 0:05:59.240 Cold War, was put somebody on the moon, and the 0:05:59.360 --> 0:06:04.280 US did, and not too long in historic terms, after that, 0:06:04.320 --> 0:06:07.279 the Soviet Union went out of business, so that was 0:06:07.400 --> 0:06:09.080 good for us. 0:06:09.680 --> 0:06:13.279 During Spotnik, the old folks were kind of freaking out. 0:06:13.360 --> 0:06:18.240 And I'm curious at that point was there an understanding 0:06:18.640 --> 0:06:22.479 or a keen interest in the exploration part of this 0:06:22.720 --> 0:06:25.440 or was there a fear about the militarization part. 0:06:25.839 --> 0:06:28.760 So there was both. So the guys at NASA, and 0:06:28.800 --> 0:06:32.960 they were mostly men, were arguing that we needed to 0:06:33.120 --> 0:06:37.080 understand the cosmos. We needed to understand what cosmic rays are, 0:06:37.120 --> 0:06:42.680 We need to understand the processes that create sunlight and stars, 0:06:42.839 --> 0:06:45.919 and we need to know more about what I like 0:06:45.960 --> 0:06:49.640 to call our place in space. But the reason it 0:06:49.760 --> 0:06:54.680 was done was the Cold War. But with that these 0:06:54.760 --> 0:06:59.720 extraordinary discoveries were made, and a couple of remarkable things. 0:07:00.440 --> 0:07:04.760 In nineteen sixty eight, Bill Anders, this astronaut, took a 0:07:04.800 --> 0:07:08.960 picture of the Earth that came to be called Earth Rise, 0:07:09.400 --> 0:07:13.000 with the moon and the foreground, and this is where 0:07:13.040 --> 0:07:18.480 you see the Earth against the icy blackness of space. 0:07:18.640 --> 0:07:22.720 When the aperture of the camera was set to capture 0:07:22.920 --> 0:07:27.200 the planet Earth, the stars behind Earth were not bright 0:07:27.360 --> 0:07:32.080 enough to show up. So it's stark. There's the Earth, 0:07:32.240 --> 0:07:37.560 this planet. And then the thing that struck my grandparents 0:07:37.840 --> 0:07:42.400 was the clouds. You see Earth from space, and you 0:07:42.440 --> 0:07:46.400 see all these clouds. When you think of Earth before that, 0:07:46.520 --> 0:07:50.720 you'd think of it as a classroom globe, no clouds, 0:07:50.720 --> 0:07:54.320 and just political boundaries. And the ocean is perfectly uniform 0:07:54.480 --> 0:07:57.480 color all around the world, and so on. And so 0:07:57.640 --> 0:08:02.320 this changed history, and it was not in my opinion, 0:08:02.480 --> 0:08:05.120 and it keep in mind everybody, my opinion is correct. 0:08:05.200 --> 0:08:10.560 And so a few years later the Soviet Union was 0:08:10.600 --> 0:08:13.240 doing these extraordinary things, and I sent these missions to 0:08:13.320 --> 0:08:16.760 Mars they sent missions to Venus all these things, and 0:08:16.880 --> 0:08:19.440 along that line, the US was going to keep up, 0:08:20.320 --> 0:08:24.600 and the US did, and this led to this extraordinary 0:08:24.800 --> 0:08:30.000 event events of the launching of the Voyager spacecraft. And 0:08:30.080 --> 0:08:35.160 these were are two spacecraft that did this so called 0:08:35.240 --> 0:08:40.400 Grand tour of the Solar System because of the alignment 0:08:40.920 --> 0:08:44.679 or the orientation or the places and spaces of the planets. 0:08:45.600 --> 0:08:49.719 And the old hilarious joke is the same arrangement of 0:08:49.800 --> 0:08:55.080 planets happened during the Atoms administration in eighteen twenty, but 0:08:55.160 --> 0:08:58.160 they didn't do anything about it. They didn't send any 0:08:58.200 --> 0:09:02.800 spacecraft in eighteen twenty. What were the thinking and so anyway, 0:09:02.800 --> 0:09:04.960 I claim this changed the course of history, and this 0:09:05.040 --> 0:09:08.480 led to the Golden Record, which is on your tattoo. 0:09:08.920 --> 0:09:10.920 Can you tell us more about the Golden Record? Like 0:09:11.120 --> 0:09:13.360 I obviously like to think I'm an expert enough that 0:09:13.400 --> 0:09:16.000 I tattooed on my body. But my real understanding is 0:09:16.000 --> 0:09:18.079 that what it's a group of people, which I think 0:09:18.120 --> 0:09:21.440 involved Carl Sagan they made this recording of positive Earth 0:09:21.480 --> 0:09:24.439 stuff that we sent up on the Voyager missions. Is 0:09:24.480 --> 0:09:25.360 that essentially it? 0:09:25.920 --> 0:09:29.480 Yes, So everybody, let's just talk some more about me. 0:09:30.679 --> 0:09:36.439 I happened to be in class with Carl Sagan, famous astronomer. 0:09:36.520 --> 0:09:39.640 I happened to be in class. I was a senior 0:09:39.720 --> 0:09:43.040 in mechanical engineering school. I took astronomy one oh two 0:09:43.720 --> 0:09:47.720 for kicks, just I took a freshman level course because 0:09:47.760 --> 0:09:51.240 this guy had become so famous, this Carl Sagan, who's 0:09:51.280 --> 0:09:54.080 on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. This is before 0:09:54.880 --> 0:09:59.760 Jimmy Fallon, before Jay Leno. Yeah, and Carl Sagan said, 0:09:59.800 --> 0:10:03.480 we're to put this record, this phonograph record. And for 0:10:03.520 --> 0:10:06.360 the young people listening, I know you're all into vinyl again, 0:10:07.040 --> 0:10:10.680 right on, way to go, turn it up loud, Okay, 0:10:10.720 --> 0:10:13.839 while you're doing all that. The idea was to send 0:10:13.880 --> 0:10:19.000 a phonograph record to Phonograph Records into deep space, and 0:10:19.040 --> 0:10:21.959 so then you're gonna put sounds on the phonograph record, 0:10:22.080 --> 0:10:27.440 sounds of this extraordinary world Earth. And Carl Sagan said, 0:10:27.440 --> 0:10:30.280 don't worry, young people were going to put a rock 0:10:30.320 --> 0:10:33.600 and roll song on the record, and he said it's 0:10:33.640 --> 0:10:39.080 going to be rollover Beethoven by Chuck Berry. And I 0:10:39.120 --> 0:10:42.120 certainly voiced a concern. But this next part may be 0:10:42.360 --> 0:10:47.000 a so called constructed memory. I claim I stood up. 0:10:47.800 --> 0:10:49.600 This is a part of the semester. You know, there 0:10:49.600 --> 0:10:53.880 are people who are so confident in college that they 0:10:53.920 --> 0:10:56.960 don't go to class. They just take the tests and 0:10:57.000 --> 0:10:59.080 the final, and they write the paper and they just 0:10:59.160 --> 0:11:02.400 read the tech don't go to class. I was not 0:11:02.520 --> 0:11:06.119 among those people because I felt that Sagan was so entertaining, 0:11:06.200 --> 0:11:10.160 he was such an amazing speaker. So I claim I 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:12.600 stood up and I said, Professor Sagan, it's not roll 0:11:12.640 --> 0:11:15.640 over Beethoven. The song you want is Johnny be Good 0:11:16.360 --> 0:11:19.440 by Chuck Berry. And so I was not the only 0:11:19.480 --> 0:11:24.800 guy expressing this sentiment, but I was particularly vocal because 0:11:24.800 --> 0:11:28.680 I'm a particular fan of Chuck Berry, and so Chuck 0:11:28.720 --> 0:11:30.800 Berry's on the record. I take full credit. 0:11:30.960 --> 0:11:33.560 You're saying that you helped decide what was on the 0:11:33.600 --> 0:11:35.040 Golden Record. How did I not know this? 0:11:35.559 --> 0:11:38.760 It's all me, everybody, and it's just you guys. Understand 0:11:38.800 --> 0:11:42.480 the dumb luctivity of my life that I happened to 0:11:42.520 --> 0:11:46.240 be in this class. First of all, that I got 0:11:46.240 --> 0:11:49.560 into this extraordinary university, Cornell, that I got into there 0:11:49.800 --> 0:11:54.480 was I'm sure some mistake in the admissions department, but 0:11:54.679 --> 0:11:58.400 I happened to be there at this moment in history 0:11:59.320 --> 0:12:02.920 of space exploration that changed my life. And so I'm 0:12:03.040 --> 0:12:06.200 very thankful, and I tell everybody those two spacecraft are 0:12:06.280 --> 0:12:12.679 still flying because they're powered by plutonium. It is extraordinary. 0:12:12.720 --> 0:12:14.800 And this is what Carl Sagan used talk about all 0:12:14.840 --> 0:12:20.959 the time. Humans in so many ways are not worthy 0:12:21.000 --> 0:12:29.560 of respect, like we're just mean spirited, crummy creatures. But 0:12:29.800 --> 0:12:34.360 in other ways we can do these extraordinary things and 0:12:34.679 --> 0:12:39.400 understand our place in space and try to know where 0:12:39.400 --> 0:12:42.760 we came from, and to ponder whether or not we're 0:12:42.800 --> 0:12:47.440 alone in the cosmos. These are just extraordinary questions. And 0:12:47.520 --> 0:12:51.360 along with that, for Carl Sagan and Andrew and his wife 0:12:52.120 --> 0:12:56.520 then and the people that he worked with, they just 0:12:56.800 --> 0:13:01.840 wanted everybody to appreciate the beauty that humans appreciate. And 0:13:01.880 --> 0:13:05.040 that's what's on the record, the way. 0:13:04.880 --> 0:13:08.280 That you're described. I mean everyone from the astronaut who 0:13:08.280 --> 0:13:13.320 took that photograph of Earth from the moon to the 0:13:13.320 --> 0:13:15.600 fact that you put Chuck Berry on the Golden Record. 0:13:16.000 --> 0:13:19.319 All of the sixties and seventies and eighties, the reputation 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:22.880 that NASA had was almost this glamorous and certainly now 0:13:22.920 --> 0:13:28.520 looking back, very fucking cool. Cool group of people who seem, 0:13:28.720 --> 0:13:31.280 especially in retrospect given the world we live in now, 0:13:31.440 --> 0:13:36.400 very hopeful, very aspirational, and I think we think a 0:13:36.400 --> 0:13:39.360 lot about that, but also think about the competition that 0:13:39.400 --> 0:13:43.920 has come to dominate space that then kind of ignores 0:13:44.120 --> 0:13:47.440 the cooperation. What I'm getting at here is at what 0:13:47.600 --> 0:13:51.679 point did the International Space Station come into this conversation? 0:13:51.800 --> 0:13:53.840 Can you talk a little bit about how it started 0:13:53.840 --> 0:13:56.040 and then which countries cooperated with it? Did it come 0:13:56.080 --> 0:13:57.600 out of this same idea of hey, we can do 0:13:57.640 --> 0:14:00.640 amazing things together. Let's put music and send out there. 0:14:00.840 --> 0:14:04.480 Well, another thing along this line, talking about Carl Sagan 0:14:04.520 --> 0:14:08.760 again this mythic astronomer, I say mythic. He's a real person, 0:14:09.360 --> 0:14:13.720 but he's so influential, Like for example, you mentioned earlier 0:14:13.920 --> 0:14:18.280 before we started, you mentioned Neil deGrasse Tyson. As you know, 0:14:18.320 --> 0:14:21.440 Steve Martin said, personal friend of mine and me. We 0:14:21.840 --> 0:14:25.840 probably would not be doing what we're doing without the 0:14:25.920 --> 0:14:30.320 creation of NASA and without Carl Sagan and his influence. 0:14:31.160 --> 0:14:36.200 So along this line, Carl Sagan started the planetary sieting 0:14:37.080 --> 0:14:40.520 because he and his colleagues felt that public interest in 0:14:40.560 --> 0:14:44.040 space was very high, but government support of it was 0:14:44.080 --> 0:14:47.480 not especially high that would never happen again. That's the 0:14:47.480 --> 0:14:52.560 same thing's going on now. And they were very concerned 0:14:52.600 --> 0:14:57.520 about nuclear war, and they wanted very much to engage 0:14:57.600 --> 0:15:02.280 the Soviet Union, and so there was this hand shaken space. 0:15:03.400 --> 0:15:06.640 Now I'm doing this for memory. I should look this up. 0:15:06.680 --> 0:15:10.479 I should have it at my brain for tips LEONEV 0:15:10.800 --> 0:15:13.920 and Allen. That's not quite right. 0:15:14.520 --> 0:15:18.160 I got it. It's a Leonov and Stafford astronaut Thomas 0:15:18.200 --> 0:15:20.880 Stafford and Russian cosmonaut Aleck Say Leonov. 0:15:21.440 --> 0:15:25.560 Right, they shook hands in space, an astronaut and a cosmonaut, 0:15:26.720 --> 0:15:28.960 and this was going to be okay, cold war over 0:15:29.520 --> 0:15:32.800 shirk hands in space, Let's go. And that led to 0:15:32.840 --> 0:15:36.360 the International Space Station. And for those of you who remember, 0:15:37.320 --> 0:15:39.960 for many years the only way to get up and 0:15:40.000 --> 0:15:42.560 down to the International Space Station was on a Russian 0:15:42.680 --> 0:15:47.240 rocket because the Russian rockets were just big, heavy and reliable, 0:15:47.680 --> 0:15:50.760 and they so are. But the Space Shuttle was created 0:15:50.920 --> 0:15:53.120 to get people up and down to the space station. 0:15:53.240 --> 0:15:56.400 The user words shuttle like you're going to go, you know, 0:15:56.480 --> 0:15:59.480 on a bus every day. But it turned out to 0:15:59.520 --> 0:16:03.760 be fantastically expensive. But that dream or that vision of 0:16:03.960 --> 0:16:09.360 using space exploration, to establish international relations, to prevent an 0:16:09.400 --> 0:16:11.120 international conflict. 0:16:11.480 --> 0:16:12.280 Is still with us. 0:16:14.080 --> 0:16:18.000 You talk to any US astronaut, he or she speaks Russian, 0:16:19.000 --> 0:16:23.600 you talk to any cosmonaut, he or she speaks English 0:16:24.000 --> 0:16:27.600 because they train together. They still cooperate. With all the 0:16:27.640 --> 0:16:33.080 other stuff that's going on, sabotaging underwater natural gas lines, 0:16:33.240 --> 0:16:37.440 conflict in Ukraine, all the other sort of Cold war 0:16:37.520 --> 0:16:41.880 knock on stuff that's going on, there's still international cooperation 0:16:42.040 --> 0:16:43.480 in space. It's remarkable. 0:16:50.040 --> 0:16:52.160 Welcome back to here we go again with me Calpen, 0:16:52.280 --> 0:16:56.600 your host and our guest, the wonderful Bill n I. Okay, Bill, so, 0:16:56.760 --> 0:16:59.320 I love how you ended that last segment with the 0:16:59.320 --> 0:17:01.880 reality that that no matter what conflicts are happening in 0:17:01.880 --> 0:17:05.240 the world, we're still cooperating in the space station. But okay, 0:17:05.240 --> 0:17:09.040 what about the space racing Now, I'm curious what's the 0:17:09.080 --> 0:17:13.160 same in what's changed? And especially that original space race 0:17:13.840 --> 0:17:16.240 Did it truly ever end? Does it continue in a 0:17:16.359 --> 0:17:18.000 version of its original form? Today? 0:17:18.359 --> 0:17:21.080 It doesn't continue in the original form in that it's 0:17:21.119 --> 0:17:25.760 not the US versus the Soviets or Russians anymore. Now 0:17:26.040 --> 0:17:30.040 people are just as far as space racing, people are 0:17:30.119 --> 0:17:33.159 just beginning to acknowledge the importance of China, and the 0:17:33.240 --> 0:17:37.320 Chinese National Space Agency is doing extraordinary things, and they're 0:17:37.320 --> 0:17:41.520 doing them for the same reason everybody else did. First 0:17:41.560 --> 0:17:45.880 of all, it's national pride. You get Taykonts up there 0:17:45.880 --> 0:17:49.320 in their own space station doing their own cool experiments. 0:17:49.320 --> 0:17:50.800 They want to go to the south pole of the 0:17:50.840 --> 0:17:55.240 Moon because there is nominally an engineering reason to go there. 0:17:55.280 --> 0:17:59.399 That is to say, people suspect strongly there's enough ice 0:18:00.400 --> 0:18:05.280 in the regolith. That's a fabulous word, that the rocky 0:18:05.400 --> 0:18:08.720 surface of the Moon that you could use solar panels 0:18:08.720 --> 0:18:12.879 to make electricity, turn the water into hydrogen and oxygen gas, 0:18:12.960 --> 0:18:15.760 and then liquid hydrogen and oxygen recombine them and have 0:18:15.800 --> 0:18:19.680 a rocket from the Moon run by rocket fuel made 0:18:19.680 --> 0:18:23.320 of moon stuff. So I know it was okay, it's 0:18:23.320 --> 0:18:25.520 a lot. But the other reason to go to the 0:18:25.520 --> 0:18:29.760 Moon is national pride and plant the flag and so on. 0:18:30.600 --> 0:18:34.199 But then that's this international space race that's just getting 0:18:34.280 --> 0:18:39.800 acknowledged here in the US circles since that Congressman Wolf 0:18:40.320 --> 0:18:42.639 retired that you don't have the same but he just 0:18:42.800 --> 0:18:44.040 was bringing up all the time. 0:18:44.240 --> 0:18:46.440 So Congressman Wolf, for those who don't know was the 0:18:46.480 --> 0:18:50.200 author of the Wolf Amendment, which prevented and prevents still 0:18:50.280 --> 0:18:53.159 the US from cooperating with China in space exploration. 0:18:53.560 --> 0:18:56.720 But then the other space race is these billionaires rather 0:18:57.320 --> 0:19:01.960 who are going at it with their own companies. And 0:19:02.040 --> 0:19:04.280 so they're doing it for a couple of reasons. First 0:19:04.280 --> 0:19:10.040 of all, their own pride and space intrigues. Everybody, everybody, 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:13.080 I think, goes through a period of wanting to be 0:19:13.119 --> 0:19:16.880 an astronaut and fly in space. And we all embrace 0:19:16.960 --> 0:19:19.239 science fiction where you go to other worlds and do 0:19:19.280 --> 0:19:22.080 these extraordinary things and compare the other world to our 0:19:22.160 --> 0:19:26.240 world and wonder if we're alone in the universe. That's 0:19:26.280 --> 0:19:29.560 all in there, and then there's real money to be made. 0:19:29.680 --> 0:19:32.320 A lot of people I speak with are not aware 0:19:32.440 --> 0:19:37.840 of the extraordinary amount of money that's spent in space. Wait, 0:19:38.400 --> 0:19:40.920 all the money that's spent in space is really spent 0:19:41.040 --> 0:19:46.240 on Earth. Wait a second. Yeah. So the SpaceX, for example, 0:19:46.359 --> 0:19:49.679 is huge business with the Air Force, Space Force, NASA 0:19:50.280 --> 0:19:55.600 along with its own starlink thing. Man. They launch rockets 0:19:55.760 --> 0:19:59.240 a couple three times a week, these very reliable Falcon 0:19:59.359 --> 0:20:04.639 nine rockets, and they do it for business to dominate 0:20:04.920 --> 0:20:08.360 global communications in lower author and the technology has got 0:20:08.400 --> 0:20:09.879 to the point where you can do that. You know, 0:20:09.920 --> 0:20:13.199 it's like a cell phone signal. You know, when you 0:20:13.280 --> 0:20:15.240 drive around the cell phone, you can go from one 0:20:15.280 --> 0:20:18.760 cell to another and the system hands it from one 0:20:19.240 --> 0:20:22.439 hands your phone call from one cell to another cell seamlessly. 0:20:23.160 --> 0:20:26.000 Now these you know, these spacecraft are going in the 0:20:26.000 --> 0:20:29.000 English units. It's over seventeen thousand miles an hour and 0:20:29.040 --> 0:20:32.760 they're handing the communications signal from one to another. It's 0:20:32.800 --> 0:20:33.560 really amazing. 0:20:33.920 --> 0:20:37.040 The number of satellites that allow us to do what 0:20:37.080 --> 0:20:40.920 we do was kind of put into scope. I did 0:20:40.920 --> 0:20:44.720 a USO tour to the Space Force space in Greenland 0:20:44.720 --> 0:20:46.840 at Tuley a couple of years ago. 0:20:47.280 --> 0:20:48.680 What time of year were you know. 0:20:49.200 --> 0:20:50.399 I mean it didn't matter, it was greatly. 0:20:50.800 --> 0:20:52.240 You'd have to kill me, it was. 0:20:52.400 --> 0:20:55.000 It was so well, it was winter because it was cold, 0:20:55.000 --> 0:20:56.479 and it was dark. It was dark the whole time 0:20:56.520 --> 0:20:58.760 we were there. And I mean two things that I 0:20:58.800 --> 0:21:01.119 walked away with the thing on my list. You're never 0:21:01.160 --> 0:21:02.679 allowed to have your own schedule when you go on 0:21:02.720 --> 0:21:05.320 these USO tours, nor should you. I guess you're giving 0:21:05.320 --> 0:21:08.520 your time. But I really wanted to see the Greenland Telescope, 0:21:08.520 --> 0:21:12.000 which is part of the event Horizon Telescope, and so 0:21:12.160 --> 0:21:16.080 I like DMD the folks who were working on it directly. 0:21:16.119 --> 0:21:18.840 I found out who they were, followed them on Instagram. 0:21:19.240 --> 0:21:22.840 They were gracious and excited that I was coming, and so, as. 0:21:22.720 --> 0:21:24.920 Carl Sagan said all the time, when you're in love, 0:21:24.960 --> 0:21:27.440 you want to tell the world. They wanted to show 0:21:27.480 --> 0:21:30.040 you their equipment, right, it was very cool. 0:21:30.040 --> 0:21:31.399 They wanted to show me the equipment, and they were 0:21:31.400 --> 0:21:33.720 from all over the world. I mean, these these these 0:21:33.720 --> 0:21:37.000 incredible scientists. But the second thing that I saw, I 0:21:37.040 --> 0:21:39.399 did you know, worked in government years ago. No longer 0:21:39.400 --> 0:21:42.280 have a clearance, so I couldn't see everything. But it 0:21:42.400 --> 0:21:46.120 seemed like one of the big purposes of Space Force, 0:21:46.240 --> 0:21:50.120 especially at that base, was to track satellites all over 0:21:50.160 --> 0:21:52.440 the world and make sure that they don't crash into. 0:21:52.320 --> 0:21:54.080 Each other, a huge problem. 0:21:54.080 --> 0:21:56.160 And I was like, this is crazy there. And of course, 0:21:56.200 --> 0:21:58.160 I mean when you think about it, exactly what you said, 0:21:58.200 --> 0:22:00.280 the fact that you can you know, you can listen 0:22:00.320 --> 0:22:02.239 to everything no matter where you're in the world. I mean, 0:22:02.280 --> 0:22:05.040 how do we think on my phone telling me which 0:22:05.040 --> 0:22:08.000 subway line to take and knowing where I am and 0:22:08.040 --> 0:22:10.320 whether I'm changing trains like all of that is because 0:22:11.000 --> 0:22:13.760 of all of this. You've also spent some time at 0:22:13.800 --> 0:22:15.800 a Space Force space Colorado, right last year? 0:22:15.840 --> 0:22:16.800 Yeah, went to Butler. 0:22:16.920 --> 0:22:19.080 Yeah, so is that the same. Are these big concerns. 0:22:19.119 --> 0:22:21.199 That is why space Force exists. 0:22:21.520 --> 0:22:25.360 It is the concerness of concerns, and so you hear 0:22:25.400 --> 0:22:30.560 it express different nouns. But Kissler, a guy named Kissler, 0:22:30.560 --> 0:22:34.159 did this analysis the Kissler effect, the Kissler syndrome, the 0:22:34.280 --> 0:22:38.280 Kissler catastrophe, where he pointed out, when you start running 0:22:38.320 --> 0:22:43.080 the spacecraft into each other, you'll create orbital debris on 0:22:43.119 --> 0:22:47.520 a global scale that you cannot clean up. This is 0:22:47.960 --> 0:22:50.320 trying to catch a bullet with a bullet, as the 0:22:50.359 --> 0:22:53.080 saying goes, and you just can't. I mean, it almost 0:22:53.080 --> 0:22:57.680 certainly cannot. And every year at science fairs people come 0:22:57.760 --> 0:23:02.000 up with the giant nets and but it's just a 0:23:02.320 --> 0:23:08.080 huge concern. And so were you around when people's Republic 0:23:08.119 --> 0:23:12.280 of China Army shot down one of their own satellites. 0:23:12.400 --> 0:23:14.800 This was literally my next question for you. I was 0:23:14.880 --> 0:23:18.760 around for it, and I remember it being shocking, at 0:23:18.840 --> 0:23:21.040 least in some of the astronomy blogs. That I read. 0:23:21.200 --> 0:23:25.640 And then so just this danger of can it pierce 0:23:26.320 --> 0:23:29.359 the space station? Will it affect other satellites? What was 0:23:29.359 --> 0:23:29.879 that about? 0:23:30.480 --> 0:23:34.040 Well, they were showing off, is my understanding. Now we 0:23:34.080 --> 0:23:36.480 could do this, We could shoot down satellites. We could 0:23:36.480 --> 0:23:38.720 shoot down your satellite. So you better have a treaty 0:23:38.760 --> 0:23:41.640 with us. You better not presume we're not a spacefaring 0:23:41.720 --> 0:23:47.040 nation with extraordinary technical capability. Okay. So in response to that, 0:23:47.200 --> 0:23:51.560 you may remember the US shot down its own satellite, 0:23:51.600 --> 0:23:56.639 this U CARS, which was an acronym upper atmospheric something 0:23:56.760 --> 0:24:02.080 something research system just take over like the word even 0:24:02.080 --> 0:24:05.200 the word NASA is a word now it's not an 0:24:05.240 --> 0:24:10.080 acronym for many people, National aeron otion, space and industriction. 0:24:10.320 --> 0:24:12.719 So the Chinese shot down a satellite kind of as 0:24:12.760 --> 0:24:15.040 a display of power, or what happened. 0:24:14.680 --> 0:24:19.040 Next along this line, then the US shot down its 0:24:19.080 --> 0:24:22.760 own satellite to show this is how you do it. 0:24:23.440 --> 0:24:27.600 You don't make a mess. You shoot it down, you know, carefully. 0:24:28.240 --> 0:24:30.720 And I just remember this that it was shot down 0:24:31.160 --> 0:24:35.000 from a missile on a ship at sea, a US 0:24:35.080 --> 0:24:39.200 ship at sea, and they couldn't shoot it down sort 0:24:39.200 --> 0:24:44.160