WEBVTT - Dead or Alive 0:00:15.170 --> 0:00:23.850 Pushkin. One night in April twenty nineteen, a group of 0:00:23.890 --> 0:00:27.930 Israeli scientists were trying to land a spacecraft on the Moon. 0:00:31.210 --> 0:00:34.890 The spacecraft was called the Bearasheet, which means in the 0:00:34.930 --> 0:00:38.370 beginning in Hebrew, it's the first word of the Book 0:00:38.370 --> 0:00:42.730 of Genesis. The unmanned Israeli craft was about five feet tall, 0:00:43.450 --> 0:00:46.610 a little chamber with four extended legs and some solar 0:00:46.650 --> 0:00:50.770 panels on top. The whole thing was coated in gold foil, 0:00:51.290 --> 0:00:56.530 like an oligarch's sushi order chersh hamersh a bar. The 0:00:56.650 --> 0:01:00.890 launch had gone smoothly. Berescheet's lander separated from the rocket 0:01:00.930 --> 0:01:04.810 that had catapulted it into space. Then, for more than 0:01:04.850 --> 0:01:08.530 a month, it traced an elliptical orbit around the Earth, 0:01:09.170 --> 0:01:12.850 going further and further out until it could be captured 0:01:12.890 --> 0:01:18.690 by the Moon's gravity. Now, finally, the Bearsheet was sinking 0:01:18.770 --> 0:01:22.170 down toward an ancient volcanic field on the Moon, a 0:01:22.290 --> 0:01:27.490 place known as the Sea of Serenity. All of Israel 0:01:27.610 --> 0:01:31.210 was excited. The landing would be the culmination of years 0:01:31.290 --> 0:01:39.010 of work. In Los Angeles, an entrepreneur called Nova Spevak 0:01:39.610 --> 0:01:42.690 was watching the landing on a live stream. He wasn't 0:01:42.690 --> 0:01:45.570 just a space fan. He had a lot at stake 0:01:45.650 --> 0:01:48.810 in the Bearasheet mission. It was the culmination of years 0:01:48.810 --> 0:01:52.210 of work for him too. He knew how it was 0:01:52.250 --> 0:01:54.810 supposed to go down. But then they were doing the 0:01:55.130 --> 0:02:00.130 landing maneuver, which basically involves rotating the spacecraft at high 0:02:00.170 --> 0:02:02.610 speed while it's kind of speeding towards the Moon. That 0:02:02.730 --> 0:02:05.090 maneuver is very precise and involves a lot of computer 0:02:05.170 --> 0:02:10.930 controlled firings of different thrusters. Were the spacecraft try to 0:02:11.090 --> 0:02:15.330 enable the engine. All of a sudden there was an 0:02:15.330 --> 0:02:18.490 alert and things were flashing red on mission control in Israel, 0:02:18.570 --> 0:02:23.170 and we're seeing and something's wrong. We have the main 0:02:23.210 --> 0:02:28.850 engine back on. No, but it's not no, no I. 0:02:33.530 --> 0:02:36.890 A sensor is reporting data that can't be right. So 0:02:36.930 --> 0:02:41.370 either the sensors failed or the spacecraft is losing its orientation. 0:02:41.930 --> 0:02:43.690 The main engine is back on, but we have lost 0:02:43.730 --> 0:02:48.650 communication with a spacecraft. Nova's heart was in his mouth 0:02:49.330 --> 0:02:53.490 because on board the Bearsheet was a library. You could 0:02:53.530 --> 0:02:57.210 say it was the library of Nova's dreams, a message 0:02:57.210 --> 0:03:00.410 in a bottle. The library was a backup of the 0:03:00.410 --> 0:03:04.650 world's knowledge. It was designed to be stable and robust, 0:03:04.770 --> 0:03:07.850 enough to last a billion years, a way of saying 0:03:07.890 --> 0:03:12.610 to future civilization, we were here and perhaps away for 0:03:12.650 --> 0:03:17.170 twenty first century humanity to cheat death. It was meant 0:03:17.210 --> 0:03:20.570 to survive eternity on the moon, but had it made 0:03:20.570 --> 0:03:26.530 it there, nova had no way of knowing. Chersh hammersh 0:03:27.250 --> 0:03:42.610 ah bar. Two. This is Into the Zone, a podcast 0:03:42.650 --> 0:03:45.810 about opposites and how borders are never as clear as 0:03:45.810 --> 0:03:50.370 we think. I'm Harry Kunzru. We're at the last episode 0:03:50.370 --> 0:03:53.730 of the season and finally dealing with the biggest binary 0:03:53.730 --> 0:03:57.610 opposition of all. This is a story about knowledge and 0:03:57.730 --> 0:04:02.090 tiny animals. It's about dark ages and the darkness of space. 0:04:02.730 --> 0:04:06.690 It's about viruses and permafrost and the strange things that 0:04:06.730 --> 0:04:09.890 can happen on the fuzzy border between life and its opposite. 0:04:10.930 --> 0:04:20.170 Not death, necessarily call it non life. They say you 0:04:20.250 --> 0:04:23.290 only die when the last person who remembers you is dead. 0:04:24.330 --> 0:04:27.090 If we could send memories of ourselves to the far future, 0:04:27.810 --> 0:04:32.130 wouldn't that be a little like making ourselves immortal. In 0:04:32.250 --> 0:04:35.810 nineteen thirty nine, as part of the New York World's Fair, 0:04:36.490 --> 0:04:40.410 the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company buried what it called 0:04:40.490 --> 0:04:44.850 a time bomb under a Plaza in Queens. This rocket 0:04:44.850 --> 0:04:48.730 shaped container held a variety of everyday objects, such as 0:04:48.730 --> 0:04:52.210 a fountain pen, a set of alphabet blocks, and a 0:04:52.250 --> 0:04:56.330 pack of cigarettes. It also housed glass fials of seeds 0:04:56.690 --> 0:05:00.170 and a microfilm, a fancy new technology back then, with 0:05:00.290 --> 0:05:03.770 about ten million words of text and a few thousand pictures. 0:05:04.730 --> 0:05:08.170 Westinghouse later changed the name of the time bomb to 0:05:08.290 --> 0:05:11.930 the much less fusing time capsule, And if you want 0:05:11.930 --> 0:05:13.690 to find out about it, you might want to listen 0:05:13.730 --> 0:05:17.170 to episode ten of My Fellow Pushkin Night Jill Lapaus show, 0:05:17.490 --> 0:05:24.490 The Last Archive. There's something irresistible about addressing oneself to 0:05:24.570 --> 0:05:27.730 the future. As a kid, I remember writing a message 0:05:27.730 --> 0:05:29.810 for a time capsule that was going to be buried 0:05:29.850 --> 0:05:33.970 outside the offices of a children's publisher. But time capsules 0:05:33.970 --> 0:05:38.170 have always been a thing. Ancient Chinese emperors built armies 0:05:38.170 --> 0:05:41.730 to escort them to the afterlife. In seventeen ninety five, 0:05:41.930 --> 0:05:47.010 a bunch of freemasons, including former American revolutionaries Samuel Adams 0:05:47.010 --> 0:05:50.850 and Paul Revere, put a brass box inside the cornerstone 0:05:50.890 --> 0:05:56.890 of the new Massachusetts State House. Inside the box were newspapers, coins, 0:05:57.330 --> 0:06:00.650 and a silver plate engraved by Paul Revere himself, who 0:06:00.730 --> 0:06:06.210 was both a fast rider and a master silversmith, all 0:06:06.250 --> 0:06:11.370 of us Chinese emperors. Paul Revere me, we're trying to 0:06:11.410 --> 0:06:15.290 do the same thing. We were trying to time travel. 0:06:16.530 --> 0:06:19.450 We were burying parts of ourselves as a way of 0:06:19.490 --> 0:06:25.570 reaching out into the future, transcending our normal lifespans. With 0:06:25.690 --> 0:06:29.410 the arrival of space exploration, people stopped just thinking about 0:06:29.410 --> 0:06:32.530 the future on Earth and began to wonder about how 0:06:32.610 --> 0:06:37.290 humanity should present itself to other intelligent life forms. What 0:06:37.370 --> 0:06:40.650 kind of cosmic dating profiles should we build to get 0:06:40.650 --> 0:06:45.450 potential partners to swipe right? And after the invention of 0:06:45.490 --> 0:06:50.050 atomic weapons and the growing consciousness of the environmental crisis, 0:06:50.850 --> 0:06:53.370 we began to wonder seriously whether we'd be around to 0:06:53.370 --> 0:06:57.450 witness the future at all. This was the world in 0:06:57.530 --> 0:07:02.770 which Nova Spivak grew up. When I was about eight 0:07:02.850 --> 0:07:06.530 years old, somebody gave me a big green book. It 0:07:06.650 --> 0:07:12.450 was a blank, giant, eight hundred or a thousand page book, 0:07:13.010 --> 0:07:17.130 sort of a hard bound dictionary or encyclopedia, but completely blank, 0:07:17.690 --> 0:07:19.970 and I thought that was just the greatest present. I 0:07:20.010 --> 0:07:22.650 was constantly thinking about what would I write in this book? 0:07:23.330 --> 0:07:27.210 Growing up in Boston in the nineteen seventies, Little Nova 0:07:27.450 --> 0:07:31.690 felt he had a special destiny. Not long after getting 0:07:31.690 --> 0:07:37.970 that gift, I had this vivid dream I was an 0:07:38.010 --> 0:07:43.410 adult during a time where some terrible environmental catastrophe took 0:07:43.450 --> 0:07:47.850 place that caused the authorities around the world to come 0:07:47.890 --> 0:07:50.450 to the conclusion that the air was not safe to breathe. 0:07:52.810 --> 0:07:55.610 It's an epic science fiction novel of a dream in 0:07:55.650 --> 0:07:57.650 which he's one of a small number of people who 0:07:57.730 --> 0:08:03.770 survived the apocalypse and live in giant underground capsules. There 0:08:03.850 --> 0:08:07.050 were these giant concrete cylinders, I mean huge. Each one 0:08:07.090 --> 0:08:10.290 could have thousands of people living in many, many levels, 0:08:10.290 --> 0:08:13.450 and they were kind of drilled into the ground. In 0:08:13.650 --> 0:08:18.090 Nova's dream, which really earns this cosmic soundtrack, a long 0:08:18.130 --> 0:08:22.570 time goes by. After a while, the giant cylinders begin 0:08:22.650 --> 0:08:25.690 to sink into the ground and most people are suffocated. 0:08:26.610 --> 0:08:29.130 Nova is one of a small group of survivors who 0:08:29.170 --> 0:08:32.650 make it out. He realizes he's amongst the last people 0:08:32.690 --> 0:08:36.770 alive who remember the world as it was before the disaster. 0:08:39.410 --> 0:08:43.810 That world doesn't exist, so what of it should we 0:08:43.850 --> 0:08:49.810 preserve and how and why? And so those discussions led 0:08:49.890 --> 0:08:56.690 to a decision to create a book of knowledge of 0:08:56.810 --> 0:09:00.850 every other history of everything we knew. And in order 0:09:00.890 --> 0:09:04.330 to do that, you had to have a person whose 0:09:04.410 --> 0:09:06.850 role was to sort of be in charge of that project, 0:09:07.610 --> 0:09:11.130 and that person was me. That person was known as 0:09:11.250 --> 0:09:16.050 the Keeper of the Book. Then in Nova's dream, he 0:09:16.130 --> 0:09:20.810 dies and he gets reborn, and he dies and he's 0:09:20.850 --> 0:09:25.370 reborn again. Like I said, it's an epic dream. And 0:09:25.410 --> 0:09:30.130 then in my next life in the dream, um I 0:09:30.130 --> 0:09:33.490 who I was the next Keeper of the Book. And 0:09:33.530 --> 0:09:38.010 then it started speeding up, and then I saw life 0:09:38.010 --> 0:09:40.490 after life flashing by it high speed, like maybe a 0:09:40.690 --> 0:09:45.210 hundred of them, and I could see everything about that 0:09:45.250 --> 0:09:48.130 whole life. But it was like that, And then I 0:09:48.210 --> 0:09:51.610 just couldn't remember it would be, and I saw I 0:09:51.690 --> 0:09:54.650 was like this lineage of Keepers of the Book going 0:09:54.690 --> 0:10:01.490 off into the future. Finally, little Nova has a vision 0:10:01.570 --> 0:10:04.410 of a guy with a long beard living in some 0:10:04.530 --> 0:10:08.650 kind of hut cave. It's a far future version of himself, 0:10:09.210 --> 0:10:12.610 Keeper of the Book, the last guardian of the knowledge 0:10:12.610 --> 0:10:24.290 of civilization. By now you're probably getting a picture of Nova. 0:10:24.370 --> 0:10:29.850 He's hyperactive, driven, talkative, the kind of guy who probably 0:10:29.890 --> 0:10:32.690 gets his way in negotiations just by wearing the other 0:10:32.730 --> 0:10:37.450 person out. His day job is tech entrepreneur, but he's 0:10:37.490 --> 0:10:41.770 also a utopian, someone who finds other worlds more interesting 0:10:41.810 --> 0:10:45.250 than this one, though this one has made him rich. 0:10:45.490 --> 0:10:48.410 You know, I did a lot of work on open encyclopedias, 0:10:48.490 --> 0:10:52.650 used the Wikipedia really intensely, worked on darkast Kalo project, 0:10:52.850 --> 0:10:56.290 organized knowledge and build intelligent ages later became series built 0:10:56.370 --> 0:10:59.250 data and analytics companies or natural language processing. Built all 0:10:59.290 --> 0:11:02.290 these tools. Adult Nova got to thinking about what would 0:11:02.330 --> 0:11:06.250 happen to all that knowledge if something went wrong. Now, 0:11:06.330 --> 0:11:09.170 maybe he could do something about it. He could be 0:11:09.210 --> 0:11:12.090 a real keeper of the book. We need to make 0:11:12.130 --> 0:11:15.050 a long term copy of the Wikipedia that also can 0:11:15.090 --> 0:11:17.570 never be destroyed and that will be found in the 0:11:17.610 --> 0:11:21.330 distant future, like a backup copy. That got me thinking 0:11:21.330 --> 0:11:24.210 about how to send the Wikipedia to the Moon. I realized, well, 0:11:24.210 --> 0:11:27.130 why not put it on the moon? Backing up humanity 0:11:27.210 --> 0:11:30.770 on the moon sounds like a wise idea. Particularly these days, 0:11:31.610 --> 0:11:35.570 our systems and societies feel ever more fragile. If a 0:11:35.610 --> 0:11:39.930 catastrophe does happen, maybe our knowledge can go into hibernation 0:11:40.610 --> 0:11:44.610 and then be resurrected to help build a new civilization 0:11:44.690 --> 0:11:48.290 in the future. Like how the classical texts copied and 0:11:48.410 --> 0:11:53.450 preserved by dark age monks eventually kickstarted the Renaissance. No 0:11:53.650 --> 0:11:57.810 Va Spivak calls the Lunar Library humanity's gift to the future. 0:11:59.090 --> 0:12:02.410 He thinks humanity can become bigger through the physical act 0:12:02.490 --> 0:12:05.810 of flinging its knowledge into space. Like I was just 0:12:05.810 --> 0:12:08.170 a sort of spack on a planet, but now my 0:12:08.290 --> 0:12:10.650 footprint is as wide as the Solar System. It's a 0:12:10.650 --> 0:12:14.730 different feeling, and I think everybody should have that feeling 0:12:15.850 --> 0:12:20.050 because it changes our sense of self. You know, that's important. 0:12:20.090 --> 0:12:24.010 If you really want to have a multiplanetary civilization, you've 0:12:24.050 --> 0:12:27.090 got to make people feel like they're part of a 0:12:27.210 --> 0:12:34.890 multiplanetary civilization. It's inspiring, isn't it. This intergalactic team building. 0:12:36.650 --> 0:12:40.650 Nova's vision of transcending the limits of time and space 0:12:41.130 --> 0:12:43.570 builds on some of the most famous projects of the 0:12:43.610 --> 0:12:48.570 twentieth century. In nineteen seventy seven, around the time Young 0:12:48.650 --> 0:12:53.090 Nova was dreaming his epic dream, the two Voyager spacecraft 0:12:53.170 --> 0:12:57.930 were launched, each carrying a Golden record, essentially a very 0:12:58.010 --> 0:13:02.330 durable version of a vinyl LP. They held messages of 0:13:02.370 --> 0:13:07.690 greeting from humanity to the rest of the universe. We 0:13:07.730 --> 0:13:11.770 step out of our Solar system into the universe, seeking 0:13:11.770 --> 0:13:15.530 only peace and friendship, to teach if we are called 0:13:15.610 --> 0:13:21.010 upon to be taught, if we are fortunate, this version 0:13:21.050 --> 0:13:25.210 of us, the Voyager Record, has already traveled beyond the 0:13:25.290 --> 0:13:29.730 Solar system. It's a penpal letter to the cosmos, a 0:13:29.770 --> 0:13:32.690 few lines about who we are and what we care about. 0:13:33.570 --> 0:13:36.450 But no Va. Spivak wanted to send out more than 0:13:36.490 --> 0:13:39.530 a few lines. He wanted to send all of it, 0:13:40.010 --> 0:13:43.410 all human knowledge, the whole thing preserved on the Moon. 0:13:45.130 --> 0:13:49.530 But first he got involved in history's most ridiculous mission 0:13:49.530 --> 0:14:08.090 to Mars Nova. Spivak wanted to build a lunar library 0:14:08.210 --> 0:14:11.850 to back up the world's knowledge and give human civilization 0:14:12.050 --> 0:14:16.210 a future among the stars. He set up a nonprofit 0:14:16.690 --> 0:14:20.850 he called Arc Mission, a play on Arc and Archive. 0:14:21.690 --> 0:14:24.770 Since nineteen seventy seven and the days of Voyager and 0:14:24.810 --> 0:14:28.930 the Golden Record, the technology of data storage has improved 0:14:29.010 --> 0:14:32.450 beyond all measure, but the basic questions are the same. 0:14:33.370 --> 0:14:36.010 What do you send and how do you send it? 0:14:38.650 --> 0:14:42.570 Digital storage is cheap and plentiful, but it has its limits. 0:14:43.290 --> 0:14:45.450 How can you be sure that your hard drive won't 0:14:45.490 --> 0:14:49.570 be corrupted by unshielded radiation and space. How can you 0:14:49.610 --> 0:14:53.130 be sure that aliens or future humans will even understand 0:14:53.210 --> 0:14:57.690 what you've created. You need something that will last. That 0:14:57.770 --> 0:15:03.130 was the thinking behind Golden records, durable analog materials, preferably 0:15:03.130 --> 0:15:06.770 made of something rare to signify value to an alien race. 0:15:09.730 --> 0:15:14.490 Novaspivack hit on quartz glass. It's super hard. They use 0:15:14.570 --> 0:15:17.490 it to make spacecraft windows, and he met a guy 0:15:17.530 --> 0:15:20.410 who knew how to use a laser to etch unbelievably 0:15:20.450 --> 0:15:24.210 tiny images into it. They estimated an etched ball of 0:15:24.290 --> 0:15:28.530 quartz glass would last fourteen billion years, which seemed like 0:15:28.650 --> 0:15:33.210 enough time even to them. The question was what should 0:15:33.210 --> 0:15:38.290 they put on it. A science fiction saga, the three 0:15:38.410 --> 0:15:48.290 volumes of Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy Etched in Glass. When 0:15:48.330 --> 0:15:51.290 I was a kid, I was a big science fiction fan, 0:15:51.450 --> 0:15:55.370 and I was into Asimov's Foundation trilogy partly because they 0:15:55.370 --> 0:15:58.130 were the only books that had a lead character called Hurry. 0:15:59.130 --> 0:16:03.730 In Foundation, Hurry Selden is a future super scientist who 0:16:03.730 --> 0:16:08.450 invents a discipline called psychohistory, which is basically making models 0:16:08.530 --> 0:16:11.610 or projects based on loads of data about the past. 0:16:12.330 --> 0:16:15.010 You can see why he'd be appealing to tech guys. 0:16:17.530 --> 0:16:21.370 In the novel, Harry Seldon lives in a time of decadence. 0:16:22.050 --> 0:16:28.290 The Galactic Empire is collapsing. Using psychohistory, Harry Selden produces 0:16:28.330 --> 0:16:31.570 what he calls the Seldon Plan and which I call 0:16:31.690 --> 0:16:35.410 the hurry Seldon Plan, a project to determine the right 0:16:35.450 --> 0:16:38.570 time and place to set up a new society. If 0:16:38.570 --> 0:16:41.490 he gets it right, it will shorten the coming Galactic 0:16:41.610 --> 0:16:49.450 dark Age by thousands of years. And it was through 0:16:49.570 --> 0:16:53.690 the Foundation Novels that Nova Spivak made a connection with 0:16:53.850 --> 0:16:59.530 another Asimov fan and god involved in the most springbreakish 0:16:59.530 --> 0:17:05.930 mission in the history of spaceflight. One day, Nova was 0:17:05.970 --> 0:17:10.170 scrolling through the Twitter feed of Elon Musk. Musk was 0:17:10.210 --> 0:17:13.090 going to use his cherry red Tesla as a dummy 0:17:13.170 --> 0:17:17.330 payload to test out his new Fulcan heavy rocket. His 0:17:17.490 --> 0:17:21.170 plan was to slingshot his car so it crashed landed 0:17:21.250 --> 0:17:25.770 on Mars. Here's Elon describing the first convertible to exit 0:17:25.850 --> 0:17:29.170 our atmosphere. It just has the same seats that like 0:17:29.210 --> 0:17:31.650 a normal car has. It's just literally a normal car 0:17:31.930 --> 0:17:34.770 in space, which I kind of like the absurdity of that. 0:17:35.090 --> 0:17:36.930 I just happened to be there watching when it happened, 0:17:36.930 --> 0:17:38.890 and I tweeted back to him and threw a bunch 0:17:38.930 --> 0:17:41.890 of friends as well. Dear Elon, you know you can 0:17:41.890 --> 0:17:45.090 find the tweet. I did find the tweet, Nova says, 0:17:45.570 --> 0:17:48.730 dear Elon, we made you a data crystal that lasts 0:17:48.730 --> 0:17:53.250 fourteen billion years, containing Asimov's Foundation trilogy wait less than 0:17:53.290 --> 0:17:55.810 five grams, and we sent it along on the ride 0:17:55.810 --> 0:18:01.810 to Mars, and Musk replies, Asimov's Foundation books should definitely 0:18:01.850 --> 0:18:06.010 be part of the mission. They're amazing. We then had 0:18:06.050 --> 0:18:08.730 to get to his officer trying to make that really happen. 0:18:09.690 --> 0:18:12.970 For months, Nova and his team couldn't even get Musk's 0:18:12.970 --> 0:18:17.210 people to respond to his messages. Finally, they made contact 0:18:17.210 --> 0:18:19.930 through a random friend of a friend, and Musk agreed 0:18:19.970 --> 0:18:29.090 to meet. It was the most important pitch of Nova's life. Eventually, 0:18:29.130 --> 0:18:31.410 he looks up. His assistant is sitting there. She's kind 0:18:31.450 --> 0:18:33.930 of breathlessly with us, and he looks up. He says, 0:18:33.970 --> 0:18:35.530 who are you? What is this? What is this about? 0:18:35.570 --> 0:18:38.690 I've got real work to do. Get out. At that moment, 0:18:39.130 --> 0:18:42.410 Nova knew that if he didn't get Musk's attention right 0:18:42.450 --> 0:18:46.570 there and then it was all over. So forget the presentation. 0:18:46.650 --> 0:18:49.330 Forget the fancy pedestal. I just whipped the thing out, 0:18:49.610 --> 0:18:52.090 dropped the crystal in his desk, and I say, that 0:18:52.530 --> 0:18:56.130 is the Foundation Trilogy. He's like, that's the Foundation Trilogy. Yeah. 0:18:56.170 --> 0:18:59.010 That He's like, what is its crystal? It's quarts crystal. 0:18:59.490 --> 0:19:01.970 You know, we wrote the Foundation Trilogy into it with 0:19:02.050 --> 0:19:04.610 a femto second laser and you agreed to take it 0:19:04.650 --> 0:19:08.970 to Mars on Twitter and then a spark of recognition 0:19:09.370 --> 0:19:14.050 appeared to light in Elon Musk's brain. Maybe he did 0:19:14.130 --> 0:19:16.810 remember something about that, you know. He thinks it's like 0:19:16.810 --> 0:19:22.130 a gift and we're like, no, that's like a million dollars. Okay, sorry, 0:19:22.370 --> 0:19:25.370 but no. So I like grabbing it back from him 0:19:25.490 --> 0:19:27.770 and he's like grabbing He's like, no, it's mine. I'm 0:19:27.810 --> 0:19:29.930 keeping it. I'm like, no, you're taking it to Mars. 0:19:29.970 --> 0:19:32.090 He's like, no, I'm putting it in my personal library. 0:19:33.250 --> 0:19:36.090 I have a collection of stuff. And I realized, okay, 0:19:36.130 --> 0:19:38.130 fuck it, and I pull out one of the other 0:19:38.130 --> 0:19:41.050 ones from my pocket and I say, look, fine, it's 0:19:41.050 --> 0:19:43.930 a deal. If you take this one to Mars, I'll 0:19:43.930 --> 0:19:46.970 give you another one for your library. And he's like deal. 0:19:50.050 --> 0:19:53.730 When the Falcon Heavy launched elon Musk's Tesla into space. 0:19:54.370 --> 0:19:57.610 In the driver's seat was a mannequin dressed in a spacesuit. 0:19:58.010 --> 0:20:01.730 It was called Starman after the David Bowie song, and 0:20:01.890 --> 0:20:05.850 in the car's glove compartment was a ball of quartz glass. 0:20:06.570 --> 0:20:11.130 Novas Bevac's first prototype ARC was one of those great 0:20:11.170 --> 0:20:15.730 moments in life. The plan was to crash land the 0:20:15.770 --> 0:20:20.490 Tesla onto the surface of Mars, but they missed, sending 0:20:20.490 --> 0:20:24.170 the car into a thirty million year orbit around the Sun. 0:20:27.210 --> 0:20:32.730 Bottom line is by missing Mars. Ultimately, it became the 0:20:32.890 --> 0:20:38.090 longest lasting library in human history and the first in space. 0:20:39.090 --> 0:20:42.050 Because three bucks is a library small, but it is 0:20:42.050 --> 0:20:48.530 a library. It is a library, a library in a 0:20:48.610 --> 0:20:51.450 car that has now exceeded its thirty six thousand mile 0:20:51.530 --> 0:20:55.290 warranty thirty two thousand and four and twenty eight times 0:20:55.330 --> 0:20:59.290 while driving around the Sun. The ARC that Nova Spivak 0:20:59.370 --> 0:21:01.770 would send up to the Moon on the Bearacheet mission 0:21:02.090 --> 0:21:05.890 was much more ambitious. The ARC mission had found a 0:21:05.930 --> 0:21:10.090 way to etch tiny photographic images onto nickel readable by 0:21:10.090 --> 0:21:14.770 an ordinary optical microscope. Using this technology, they made a 0:21:14.770 --> 0:21:18.490 sort of sandwich with twenty five very thin nickel sheets. 0:21:19.090 --> 0:21:22.610 The first four were fully analoged and contained many thousands 0:21:22.610 --> 0:21:27.210 of pages of text and photographs. They also contained instructions 0:21:27.250 --> 0:21:29.890 on how to read the other twenty one, which were 0:21:29.970 --> 0:21:34.250 DVD masters etched using the same technology. It's a very 0:21:34.250 --> 0:21:38.410 clever design. Each layer gets more complex and teaches you 0:21:38.450 --> 0:21:42.250 how to read the next. So what did they put 0:21:42.290 --> 0:21:47.730 on it? Wikipedia? Sure, but more than Wikipedia. When you're 0:21:47.770 --> 0:21:51.090 in the business of backing up all human knowledge, you 0:21:51.170 --> 0:21:55.330 have to ask what knowledge is worth while. This problem 0:21:55.370 --> 0:21:59.050 came up on the Voyage Emission too. When it was 0:21:59.170 --> 0:22:03.530 launched carrying the Golden Records, there were some disagreements about 0:22:03.530 --> 0:22:07.650 what to include. A panel was convened to decide, headed 0:22:07.690 --> 0:22:12.490 by the famous astronomer Carl Sagan. The record included some 0:22:12.530 --> 0:22:16.370 pictures encoded in the same way as digital information can 0:22:16.370 --> 0:22:19.090 be sent over a phone line using an analog modem. 0:22:19.890 --> 0:22:22.770 The Voyager pictures show all sorts of things and all 0:22:22.810 --> 0:22:26.610 sorts of people. The music is pretty great, probably because 0:22:26.650 --> 0:22:29.210 one of the people choosing it was Alan Lomax, the 0:22:29.250 --> 0:22:34.290 famous sound recordist and preserver of folk culture. But there 0:22:34.290 --> 0:22:41.210 were problems. Sagan and his committee wanted to include a 0:22:41.290 --> 0:22:46.050 photograph of a naked man and woman, but seventies America 0:22:46.170 --> 0:22:49.090 couldn't handle it, and the photo had to be replaced 0:22:49.130 --> 0:22:53.890 by a line drawing. Somehow, the drawing, which was intended 0:22:53.930 --> 0:22:59.010 to be racially ambiguous, got Caucasianized, and even the drawing 0:22:59.050 --> 0:23:01.770 was too much for some old NASA bureaucrat who insisted 0:23:01.810 --> 0:23:05.570 that a small vertical line be removed so that the 0:23:05.610 --> 0:23:10.810 woman would not appear to have genitals. A bean was fine, apparently, 0:23:11.090 --> 0:23:15.250 but not Evolver. As a result, this wonderful example of 0:23:15.330 --> 0:23:21.370 misogyny has recently exited the Solar system. Nova Spivak has 0:23:21.490 --> 0:23:25.690 thought a lot about how to avoid misinforming aliens about sex. 0:23:26.690 --> 0:23:28.410 To us, it might have been an artwork, but to 0:23:28.530 --> 0:23:32.530 them they form an entire scientific theory about life on Earth, 0:23:32.650 --> 0:23:39.090 which reproduces a sexually. In his space library, Nova included 0:23:39.170 --> 0:23:43.130 crowdsourced material and a copy of something called the Rosetta Disc, 0:23:43.490 --> 0:23:48.970 an archive of one thousand, five hundred World languages. Archmission 0:23:49.050 --> 0:23:53.210 is a private organization, so they had to attract sponsors. 0:23:53.250 --> 0:23:56.010 Some space on the tiny Nickel Library was allocated to 0:23:56.090 --> 0:23:59.370 private archives and to a time capsule for the Israeli 0:23:59.410 --> 0:24:06.850 Space Agency. Nova also approached his friend, the fantastic, the formidable, 0:24:07.250 --> 0:24:13.130 the entirely flat, a guesting mister David Copperfield, and he 0:24:13.450 --> 0:24:15.730 created a library of the secrets to all of his magic, 0:24:16.010 --> 0:24:23.370 the magic of David Copperfield, starting David Cornfield. I'm somehow 0:24:23.410 --> 0:24:26.930 not surprised that Nova as friends with David Copperfield. These 0:24:26.970 --> 0:24:30.290 tricks of his, they're not just tricks, they're engineering achievements, 0:24:30.850 --> 0:24:32.850 and there's a lot of science and technology behind it. 0:24:32.930 --> 0:24:37.610 All of that is in one of our vaults. Some 0:24:37.730 --> 0:24:42.970 of the space library, including Copperfield's magic, tell all his secret, 0:24:43.810 --> 0:24:47.210 but Nova promises none of it's naughty. He did not 0:24:47.370 --> 0:24:50.730 send pawn into space. But there is physical stuff in 0:24:50.730 --> 0:24:54.250 the library. We got some artifacts that were from sacred 0:24:54.290 --> 0:24:59.050 caves or at special religious monuments, or even from the 0:24:59.050 --> 0:25:01.370 bones of some saints, and a little piece of the 0:25:01.370 --> 0:25:03.610 body tree and it might just be a piece of 0:25:03.650 --> 0:25:08.490 sand from a shrine or another place of religious significance. 0:25:09.290 --> 0:25:11.730 They were at it, they thought they'd attached some actual 0:25:11.890 --> 0:25:22.850 living things. Tardi grades are microscopic eight legged creatures that 0:25:22.970 --> 0:25:26.970 were first seen by an eighteenth century German biologist. He 0:25:27.050 --> 0:25:29.850 thought they looked like little bears, and sometimes they're still 0:25:29.890 --> 0:25:34.330 cooled water bears. They're puffy and have tiny claws and 0:25:34.410 --> 0:25:38.410 are weirdly cute, which is unusual. Most micro animals tend 0:25:38.410 --> 0:25:41.650 to look like they've come out of a horror movie. 0:25:42.970 --> 0:25:46.810 Tardi grades have been around almost six hundred million years. 0:25:47.730 --> 0:25:50.970 When times are tough, like a sudden drop in temperature, 0:25:51.650 --> 0:25:54.090 they shared ninety five percent of the water in Their 0:25:54.090 --> 0:25:57.890 fat little bodies then go into a state called cryptobiosis, 0:25:58.090 --> 0:26:02.410 which literally means hidden life. In this state, they're almost 0:26:02.450 --> 0:26:07.890 impossible to kill. Nova Spivak's team encased some dehydrated Tardi 0:26:07.970 --> 0:26:11.690 grades in resin and attached them to the package. The 0:26:11.770 --> 0:26:21.250 Tarte grades and the library were shot into space, or 0:26:21.290 --> 0:26:24.730 at least that's what I read. Almost every article written 0:26:24.770 --> 0:26:28.210 about the mission mentions the Tardi grades living creatures on 0:26:28.250 --> 0:26:31.410 the Moon. It was the big story. But when I 0:26:31.450 --> 0:26:35.290 asked Nova about it, what Tarte grades? You're denying that 0:26:35.610 --> 0:26:39.810 widespread reports that Tartar grades were part of the library. 0:26:39.930 --> 0:26:43.570 I can neither confirm nor deny that there are Tartar grades. 0:26:43.890 --> 0:26:48.250 I believe there are, but actually the way we did it, 0:26:49.130 --> 0:26:51.650 it was like flipping a coin where one side is 0:26:51.730 --> 0:26:54.010 put Tartar grades, or maybe put Tartar grades, and the 0:26:54.090 --> 0:26:56.970 other side is I have no idea. At this point, 0:26:57.130 --> 0:27:00.610 I'm finding the conversation very weird. When I say the 0:27:00.650 --> 0:27:03.970 story about the Tarte grades was everywhere, I mean everywhere. 0:27:04.330 --> 0:27:06.450 It was the first thing I heard about Nova or 0:27:06.490 --> 0:27:10.250 the art mission. So was noa just ballshitting me? Why 0:27:10.370 --> 0:27:14.370 was he being so kg Well? Perhaps because of what happened. 0:27:14.450 --> 0:27:18.450 As the Bearasheet was descending towards the Moon, the scientists 0:27:18.450 --> 0:27:21.490 in Israel that were conducting the mission realized that one 0:27:21.530 --> 0:27:24.610 of the engines had stopped firing. They only had a 0:27:24.610 --> 0:27:28.570 few seconds to think. They decided to reboot the engine. 0:27:29.410 --> 0:27:34.050 That that caused the whole system to reboot. We seem 0:27:34.090 --> 0:27:38.250 to have a problem with our main engine. We are 0:27:38.290 --> 0:27:46.770 resetting the spacecraft. Try to enable the engine. We have 0:27:46.850 --> 0:27:49.770 the main engine back on it. No, but it snug No. No, 0:27:53.050 --> 0:28:00.410 The basheet lander crashed, crashed on the Moon. Then the 0:28:00.490 --> 0:28:05.530 Israelis sent a blurry, low resolution picture which showed a 0:28:05.690 --> 0:28:10.210 new crater on the Sea of Serenity. The lander or 0:28:10.250 --> 0:28:17.010 its wreckage was too small to see. The thing is 0:28:17.410 --> 0:28:20.410 if the library had been broken open, then it was 0:28:20.490 --> 0:28:23.650 possible that Tardi grades had been scattered on the surface 0:28:23.690 --> 0:28:27.890 of the Moon. I'm pretty sure that wasn't supposed to happen. 0:28:29.730 --> 0:28:32.730 The Tardi grades were supposed to be enclosed in resin 0:28:33.370 --> 0:28:37.370 sleeping soundly as part of a reference library, not just 0:28:37.810 --> 0:28:44.130 hanging out in the sea of serenity. Were they alive, 0:28:44.850 --> 0:28:47.570 could they come out of their suspended state and revive. 0:28:48.450 --> 0:28:51.610 There's no water on the Moon, so it's highly unlikely. 0:28:52.330 --> 0:28:54.890 But if you look at it a certain way, because 0:28:54.890 --> 0:28:58.810