October 21, 2025 • 46 mins
From the Cold War to today, space has always been about flexing power. So, why do we keep turning space into a race? What does that say about the future of space exploration -- and about humanity? To answer, only one guy would do: Bill Nye the Science Guy.
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Here we Go Again Again. Hey, I'm cal Penn. Welcome
to my new show, Here we Go Again.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Here We Go.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
So you may know me as an actor from Harold
and Kumar House or Designated Survivor. I'm also a former
White House staffer, a NASCAR enthusiast, an eager karaoke participant,
and I guess, as of like five seconds ago, a
podcast host.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
How am I doing so far?
Speaker 1 (00:42):
I'm hosting this podcast because there's one particular question that
I find myself asking a lot these days. Why does
the same shit keep happening? War, labor strikes, getting ghosted
by a hookup. No one wants to be stuck in
a vicious cycle of patterns repeating. So every week we're
going to take a topic from the present, see how
(01:03):
it played out in the past, and try to figure
out what it means for our future. Each episode, I'll
chat with an expert who can help me answer a
different burning question, like why is my plane always delayed?
Are we headed towards another economic crash? Is this rash
what I think it is? Oh? Wait, ignore that last one.
We're asking all the right questions to all the right
(01:25):
people to make you feel at least like nine percent
better about well everything except maybe the rashow. So now
that I got my little introduction out of the way,
I wasn't sure how I wanted to kick off the
first episode, but then I kept looking down at my tattoos.
Some people have tattoos of bald eagles, A lot of
(01:49):
people have tattoos of x's. Most of my tattoos have
something to do with astronomy. That's what you see if
you look at my sleeve, and of that, I'd say
at least half has to do with the NASA Voyager
Golden Record. If you don't know what the Golden Record is,
it's a piece of this spacecraft called the Voyager, launched
in the late nineteen seventies, and the idea there was
that if it's ever found by an intelligent civilization, and
(02:13):
if they can ever decode this record, they would see
only the best of human civilization, biology, science, music, arts, DNA.
To me, space has always been about exploring the unknown,
about possibility, and as the guy with the Voyager tattoo,
I clearly care a lot about the new space race
(02:34):
that's happening right now. From the Cold War to today,
space has really been about flexing power the United States
versus the Soviet Union, for example back in the day,
or more recently, the United States versus China. But now
there's also a new player, private corporations enter the billionaires.
(02:54):
Elon Musk is willing to spend fifteen and a half
billion dollars to be the first to colonize Mars. Jeff
Bezos is funding Blue Origin to keep up. And in
the middle of all of this is still NASA with
a shrinking budget. So here's my question, why do we
keep turning space into a race? And what does that
say about the future of space exploration and about humanity?
(03:16):
This is here we Go again, a show where we
take today's trends and headlines and then ask why does
history keep repeating itself. I'm cal Penn to explore the past, present,
and future of the space race. I knew only one
guy would do. He's super sciency, a spokesperson, an adventurer,
(03:40):
a teacher, and the only adult man I trust to
wear a bow tie. Unlike me, He's got a star
on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the singular William Sandford
n I, better known as my friend Bill Nye, the
science Guy. Welcome Bill it's so good to be here.
Thanks for doing this. Man. I think that most of
us have a very rudimentary understanding of space, and I
(04:04):
will I will preface this by saying, I think I've
shown you my astronomy tattoos, most of which are based
on the Voyager Golden Record, well pulse ar map and
things like that, but that is still you know, for
an actor, that's still a rudimentary like, well.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
You're a citizen of Earth, cal thank you.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
I like to put it that way.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Yeah, well that's what we're going for here.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
So, like, what is the history of the original space race?
In like a minute, And I'm not asking for the
version of like if you and Neil deGrasse Tyson were
in a room together, which I've seen and it's brilliant,
but like, what's the second grade version of that?
Speaker 2 (04:42):
The second grade version is the Soviet Union was created
with this idea that they would be that its system
would be better than the West. And along with that,
we're going to prove that we're better than the West.
We're going to go into space, the ultimate high ground.
(05:02):
So they built sputneck spacecraft and I was a little
little kid nineteen fifty seven and the grown ups are
all very very concerned about this. And so then the
US answered the threat or the historic achievement of Sputnik
by creating NASA, the National Annasa Space Administration, a civilian
(05:27):
space agency that was involved in flying around in space,
which you might think was more of a military thing,
but this became and everybody talks about this turning point
with John Kennedy, whatever else you might think about him,
presented this challenge of putting somebody on the moon before
(05:50):
nineteen seventy, so that became a way to fight the
Cold War, was put somebody on the moon, and the
US did, and not too long in historic terms, after that,
the Soviet Union went out of business, so that was
good for us.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
During Spotnik, the old folks were kind of freaking out.
And I'm curious at that point was there an understanding
or a keen interest in the exploration part of this
or was there a fear about the militarization part.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
So there was both. So the guys at NASA, and
they were mostly men, were arguing that we needed to
understand the cosmos. We needed to understand what cosmic rays are,
We need to understand the processes that create sunlight and stars,
and we need to know more about what I like
(06:45):
to call our place in space. But the reason it
was done was the Cold War. But with that these
extraordinary discoveries were made, and a couple of remarkable things.
In nineteen sixty eight, Bill Anders, this astronaut, took a
picture of the Earth that came to be called Earth Rise,
(07:09):
with the moon and the foreground, and this is where
you see the Earth against the icy blackness of space.
When the aperture of the camera was set to capture
the planet Earth, the stars behind Earth were not bright
enough to show up. So it's stark. There's the Earth,
(07:32):
this planet. And then the thing that struck my grandparents
was the clouds. You see Earth from space, and you
see all these clouds. When you think of Earth before that,
you'd think of it as a classroom globe, no clouds,
and just political boundaries. And the ocean is perfectly uniform
(07:54):
color all around the world, and so on. And so
this changed history, and it was not in my opinion,
and it keep in mind everybody, my opinion is correct.
And so a few years later the Soviet Union was
doing these extraordinary things, and I sent these missions to
Mars they sent missions to Venus all these things, and
(08:16):
along that line, the US was going to keep up,
and the US did, and this led to this extraordinary
event events of the launching of the Voyager spacecraft. And
these were are two spacecraft that did this so called
Grand tour of the Solar System because of the alignment
(08:40):
or the orientation or the places and spaces of the planets.
And the old hilarious joke is the same arrangement of
planets happened during the Atoms administration in eighteen twenty, but
they didn't do anything about it. They didn't send any
spacecraft in eighteen twenty. What were the thinking and so anyway,
(09:02):
I claim this changed the course of history, and this
led to the Golden Record, which is on your tattoo.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Can you tell us more about the Golden Record? Like
I obviously like to think I'm an expert enough that
I tattooed on my body. But my real understanding is
that what it's a group of people, which I think
involved Carl Sagan they made this recording of positive Earth
stuff that we sent up on the Voyager missions. Is
that essentially it?
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Yes, So everybody, let's just talk some more about me.
I happened to be in class with Carl Sagan, famous astronomer.
I happened to be in class. I was a senior
in mechanical engineering school. I took astronomy one oh two
for kicks, just I took a freshman level course because
(09:47):
this guy had become so famous, this Carl Sagan, who's
on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. This is before
Jimmy Fallon, before Jay Leno. Yeah, and Carl Sagan said,
we're to put this record, this phonograph record. And for
the young people listening, I know you're all into vinyl again,
right on, way to go, turn it up loud, Okay,
(10:10):
while you're doing all that. The idea was to send
a phonograph record to Phonograph Records into deep space, and
so then you're gonna put sounds on the phonograph record,
sounds of this extraordinary world Earth. And Carl Sagan said,
don't worry, young people were going to put a rock
and roll song on the record, and he said it's
(10:33):
going to be rollover Beethoven by Chuck Berry. And I
certainly voiced a concern. But this next part may be
a so called constructed memory. I claim I stood up.
This is a part of the semester. You know, there
are people who are so confident in college that they
(10:53):
don't go to class. They just take the tests and
the final, and they write the paper and they just
read the tech don't go to class. I was not
among those people because I felt that Sagan was so entertaining,
he was such an amazing speaker. So I claim I
stood up and I said, Professor Sagan, it's not roll
over Beethoven. The song you want is Johnny be Good
(11:16):
by Chuck Berry. And so I was not the only
guy expressing this sentiment, but I was particularly vocal because
I'm a particular fan of Chuck Berry, and so Chuck
Berry's on the record. I take full credit.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
You're saying that you helped decide what was on the
Golden Record. How did I not know this?
Speaker 2 (11:35):
It's all me, everybody, and it's just you guys. Understand
the dumb luctivity of my life that I happened to
be in this class. First of all, that I got
into this extraordinary university, Cornell, that I got into there
was I'm sure some mistake in the admissions department, but
I happened to be there at this moment in history
(11:59):
of space exploration that changed my life. And so I'm
very thankful, and I tell everybody those two spacecraft are
still flying because they're powered by plutonium. It is extraordinary.
And this is what Carl Sagan used talk about all
the time. Humans in so many ways are not worthy
(12:21):
of respect, like we're just mean spirited, crummy creatures. But
in other ways we can do these extraordinary things and
understand our place in space and try to know where
we came from, and to ponder whether or not we're
(12:42):
alone in the cosmos. These are just extraordinary questions. And
along with that, for Carl Sagan and Andrew and his wife
then and the people that he worked with, they just
wanted everybody to appreciate the beauty that humans appreciate. And
that's what's on the record, the way.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
That you're described. I mean everyone from the astronaut who
took that photograph of Earth from the moon to the
fact that you put Chuck Berry on the Golden Record.
All of the sixties and seventies and eighties, the reputation
that NASA had was almost this glamorous and certainly now
looking back, very fucking cool. Cool group of people who seem,
(13:28):
especially in retrospect given the world we live in now,
very hopeful, very aspirational, and I think we think a
lot about that, but also think about the competition that
has come to dominate space that then kind of ignores
the cooperation. What I'm getting at here is at what
point did the International Space Station come into this conversation?
(13:51):
Can you talk a little bit about how it started
and then which countries cooperated with it? Did it come
out of this same idea of hey, we can do
amazing things together. Let's put music and send out there.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Well, another thing along this line, talking about Carl Sagan
again this mythic astronomer, I say mythic. He's a real person,
but he's so influential, Like for example, you mentioned earlier
before we started, you mentioned Neil deGrasse Tyson. As you know,
Steve Martin said, personal friend of mine and me. We
(14:21):
probably would not be doing what we're doing without the
creation of NASA and without Carl Sagan and his influence.
So along this line, Carl Sagan started the planetary sieting
because he and his colleagues felt that public interest in
space was very high, but government support of it was
(14:44):
not especially high that would never happen again. That's the
same thing's going on now. And they were very concerned
about nuclear war, and they wanted very much to engage
the Soviet Union, and so there was this hand shaken space.
Now I'm doing this for memory. I should look this up.
(15:06):
I should have it at my brain for tips LEONEV
and Allen. That's not quite right.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
I got it. It's a Leonov and Stafford astronaut Thomas
Stafford and Russian cosmonaut Aleck Say Leonov.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Right, they shook hands in space, an astronaut and a cosmonaut,
and this was going to be okay, cold war over
shirk hands in space, Let's go. And that led to
the International Space Station. And for those of you who remember,
for many years the only way to get up and
down to the International Space Station was on a Russian
(15:42):
rocket because the Russian rockets were just big, heavy and reliable,
and they so are. But the Space Shuttle was created
to get people up and down to the space station.
The user words shuttle like you're going to go, you know,
on a bus every day. But it turned out to
be fantastically expensive. But that dream or that vision of
(16:03):
using space exploration, to establish international relations, to prevent an
international conflict.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Is still with us.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
You talk to any US astronaut, he or she speaks Russian,
you talk to any cosmonaut, he or she speaks English
because they train together. They still cooperate. With all the
other stuff that's going on, sabotaging underwater natural gas lines,
conflict in Ukraine, all the other sort of Cold war
(16:37):
knock on stuff that's going on, there's still international cooperation
in space. It's remarkable.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Welcome back to here we go again with me Calpen,
your host and our guest, the wonderful Bill n I. Okay, Bill, so,
I love how you ended that last segment with the
reality that that no matter what conflicts are happening in
the world, we're still cooperating in the space station. But okay,
what about the space racing Now, I'm curious what's the
same in what's changed? And especially that original space race
(17:13):
Did it truly ever end? Does it continue in a
version of its original form? Today?
Speaker 2 (17:18):
It doesn't continue in the original form in that it's
not the US versus the Soviets or Russians anymore. Now
people are just as far as space racing, people are
just beginning to acknowledge the importance of China, and the
Chinese National Space Agency is doing extraordinary things, and they're
doing them for the same reason everybody else did. First
(17:41):
of all, it's national pride. You get Taykonts up there
in their own space station doing their own cool experiments.
They want to go to the south pole of the
Moon because there is nominally an engineering reason to go there.
That is to say, people suspect strongly there's enough ice
in the regolith. That's a fabulous word, that the rocky
(18:05):
surface of the Moon that you could use solar panels
to make electricity, turn the water into hydrogen and oxygen gas,
and then liquid hydrogen and oxygen recombine them and have
a rocket from the Moon run by rocket fuel made
of moon stuff. So I know it was okay, it's
a lot. But the other reason to go to the
(18:25):
Moon is national pride and plant the flag and so on.
But then that's this international space race that's just getting
acknowledged here in the US circles since that Congressman Wolf
retired that you don't have the same but he just
was bringing up all the time.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
So Congressman Wolf, for those who don't know was the
author of the Wolf Amendment, which prevented and prevents still
the US from cooperating with China in space exploration.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
But then the other space race is these billionaires rather
who are going at it with their own companies. And
so they're doing it for a couple of reasons. First
of all, their own pride and space intrigues. Everybody, everybody,
I think, goes through a period of wanting to be
an astronaut and fly in space. And we all embrace
(19:16):
science fiction where you go to other worlds and do
these extraordinary things and compare the other world to our
world and wonder if we're alone in the universe. That's
all in there, and then there's real money to be made.
A lot of people I speak with are not aware
of the extraordinary amount of money that's spent in space. Wait,
(19:38):
all the money that's spent in space is really spent
on Earth. Wait a second. Yeah. So the SpaceX, for example,
is huge business with the Air Force, Space Force, NASA
along with its own starlink thing. Man. They launch rockets
a couple three times a week, these very reliable Falcon
(19:59):
nine rockets, and they do it for business to dominate
global communications in lower author and the technology has got
to the point where you can do that. You know,
it's like a cell phone signal. You know, when you
drive around the cell phone, you can go from one
cell to another and the system hands it from one
hands your phone call from one cell to another cell seamlessly.
(20:23):
Now these you know, these spacecraft are going in the
English units. It's over seventeen thousand miles an hour and
they're handing the communications signal from one to another. It's
really amazing.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
The number of satellites that allow us to do what
we do was kind of put into scope. I did
a USO tour to the Space Force space in Greenland
at Tuley a couple of years ago.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
What time of year were you know.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
I mean it didn't matter, it was greatly.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
You'd have to kill me, it was.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
It was so well, it was winter because it was cold,
and it was dark. It was dark the whole time
we were there. And I mean two things that I
walked away with the thing on my list. You're never
allowed to have your own schedule when you go on
these USO tours, nor should you. I guess you're giving
your time. But I really wanted to see the Greenland Telescope,
which is part of the event Horizon Telescope, and so
I like DMD the folks who were working on it directly.
(21:16):
I found out who they were, followed them on Instagram.
They were gracious and excited that I was coming, and so, as.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Carl Sagan said all the time, when you're in love,
you want to tell the world. They wanted to show
you their equipment, right, it was very cool.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
They wanted to show me the equipment, and they were
from all over the world. I mean, these these these
incredible scientists. But the second thing that I saw, I
did you know, worked in government years ago. No longer
have a clearance, so I couldn't see everything. But it
seemed like one of the big purposes of Space Force,
especially at that base, was to track satellites all over
(21:50):
the world and make sure that they don't crash into.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Each other, a huge problem.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
And I was like, this is crazy there. And of course,
I mean when you think about it, exactly what you said,
the fact that you can you know, you can listen
to everything no matter where you're in the world. I mean,
how do we think on my phone telling me which
subway line to take and knowing where I am and
whether I'm changing trains like all of that is because
of all of this. You've also spent some time at
a Space Force space Colorado, right last year?
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Yeah, went to Butler.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Yeah, so is that the same. Are these big concerns.
That is why space Force exists.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
It is the concerness of concerns, and so you hear
it express different nouns. But Kissler, a guy named Kissler,
did this analysis the Kissler effect, the Kissler syndrome, the
Kissler catastrophe, where he pointed out, when you start running
the spacecraft into each other, you'll create orbital debris on
(22:43):
a global scale that you cannot clean up. This is
trying to catch a bullet with a bullet, as the
saying goes, and you just can't. I mean, it almost
certainly cannot. And every year at science fairs people come
up with the giant nets and but it's just a
huge concern. And so were you around when people's Republic
(23:08):
of China Army shot down one of their own satellites.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
This was literally my next question for you. I was
around for it, and I remember it being shocking, at
least in some of the astronomy blogs. That I read.
And then so just this danger of can it pierce
the space station? Will it affect other satellites? What was
that about?
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Well, they were showing off, is my understanding. Now we
could do this, We could shoot down satellites. We could
shoot down your satellite. So you better have a treaty
with us. You better not presume we're not a spacefaring
nation with extraordinary technical capability. Okay. So in response to that,
you may remember the US shot down its own satellite,
(23:51):
this U CARS, which was an acronym upper atmospheric something
something research system just take over like the word even
the word NASA is a word now it's not an
acronym for many people, National aeron otion, space and industriction.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
So the Chinese shot down a satellite kind of as
a display of power, or what happened.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Next along this line, then the US shot down its
own satellite to show this is how you do it.
You don't make a mess. You shoot it down, you know, carefully.
And I just remember this that it was shot down
from a missile on a ship at sea, a US
(24:35):
ship at sea, and they couldn't shoot it down sort
of same day because the ocean was too rough. They didn't.
They didn't want the initial trajectory of the missile to
be messed up by the motion of the ship. And
I just remember thinking, Okay, the Cold War will be
(24:58):
once the Hot War starts, so it'll be really good
as long as the ocean has come. Like, this is
serious business. When you start weaponizing outer space, things can
potentially go really wrong.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
I mean, so then militarization is still it sounds like
a major aim. You're basically describing war games in space
right now.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Well, sort, but what is your what's the name of
the podcast?
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Here we go again.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Yes, So there was an anti Ballistic Missile treaty right
long about nineteen sixty eight, because people realize this is
not winnable. Man, if we start throwing weapons this expression
so are called mutually assured destruction MAD. You can't do this.
If everybody's in on it, then we can take a meeting.
If you pretend that it's a winnable situation, then you're
(25:47):
just going to keep escalating. And this was something that
Carl Sagan and the guys in the nineteen seventies and
eighties talked about all the time. Okay, let's have a treaty.
Ge wis Man. And then if we start blowing up
or knocking apart satellites in space. I worked at a
company that was involved in the KKV, the Kinetic killed vehicle.
You just run a satellite into another satellite and have
(26:10):
it shatter. Yeah, it's not winnable. Let's have a treaty.
And yet it's come all the way back around. People
are talking about warfare and space weapon putting weapons in
space the ultimate high ground, and man, it would be
much better if everybody got along. It's just it is
not a winnable thing. And this thing in Ukraine is
(26:35):
what I like to call the extended dance mix of
World War Two. It's the same bunch of people fighting
over the same land, and it's a land war in Europe,
just like we had in my parents' day, and everybody
got together and resolved that. But right now it's not
clear that everybody's getting together to resolve it this time, so.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Things are repeating themselves. The one is it fair to
say the one big difference is the role of billionaires
in the private space sector that didn't exist in the eighties.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
Yes, you're right, But with that said, you know it's
a government investment in weapons that you know, the Space
Force goes back and forth all the time about which
rocket company to use and who to sign contracts with
and all that stuff. But that aside Calah. The reason
we love space exploration is it brings out the best
(27:30):
in us. Yes, we solve problems that have never been
solved before. But on the way, people realized the extraordinary
nature of planet Earth, that we live on this extraordinary
world that is but one world in this literally unimaginable
(27:52):
vastness of creation. Nobody can really imagine how big the
universe is, how big, how many galaxies there are, and
how many planets there must be. And this leads us
to the two deep questions, where did we come from?
(28:12):
And are we alone in the universe? And I say
all the time, if you meet somebody who says they've
never wondered, that they are lying to your face.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
You know, obviously all of us have thought about the
philosophical part the exploration, the part about whether you know
how it is possible that we're here, and the idea
that you can't wrap your head around the infinite nature
of all of these galaxies.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
So there's three things that keep me in this game.
First of all I want to explore. I claim that
our ancestors who did not have the drive to explore
are not our ancestors, but guys. If you had a
tribe where the men and women did not want to
go over the hill to see what's on the other side,
(29:00):
they got out competed by the people who did want
to go over the hill and see what's on the
other side, the other valley, the other resources, and what
have you. So I claim that's deep within us. Then
the other thing is I want to find evidence of
life on another world. I want that to happen while
I'm alive. So the places to look are Mars, and
(29:25):
this is I'm talking about evidence of life. So it'd
probably be the equivalent of fossil bacteria locked in the
mud rocks of an ancient river basin. On Mars, strangers
still though near the equator of Mars. Maybe there's some
really salty slush under the sand, and there are Martian microbes,
(29:49):
Mars crobes still doing their thing, like alive things that
we could find with spacecraft. I mean, it's extraordinary. Then
the other place right now is Europa, the moon of Jupiter.
There's twice as much ocean water as Earth has. If
you have ocean water for four and a half billion years,
is there something alive on Europos It's amazing a question.
Then the other thing, the third thing is do not
(30:11):
want to get hit with an asteroid. It's a real thing.
It's not just science fiction. In twenty twenty nine, nobody's
talking about it much yet, but oh we will be
a office a name for an Egyptian god of chaos
and anxiety. It's going to come not closer to the Moon,
(30:33):
it's going to come closer than the geosynchronous satellites on Friday,
the thirteenth of April twenty twenty nine. People are going
to be talking about it. And so we want it
planetary society. We want it to be a dress rehearsal
for international cooperation on deflecting an asteroid or so called
(30:55):
mitigating the effects of an asteroid. If you knew exactly
or pretty much where it was going to land, you
could get everybody out of the way. But if it's
going to land in Paris, like that would be bad.
Like you get everybody out of the way, but you
still crushed a major international city.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
How far out would we know where it's going to
land if it is going to land.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Oh, this is the dark art, my friends. No, so
thirty years would be really good. And right now I
don't know how serious these people are, but right now
there's an effort to cut NASA's funding overall by twenty
five percent, half or more of the science budget so
(31:38):
called Science Mission Directorate SMD within NASA. So that is
not in anybody's best interest. That is shortsighted and not
being able to find asteroids using the NEO Survey or
neuarth Object Survey Mission and other ground based telescope coordinated systems,
(32:00):
is you don't want to stop doing that?
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Well, that was sort of the big question I had
for you, obviously as a Planetary Society member, and you
should all join the advocacy that is around funding for
NASA and funding for STEM and all things astronomy and
exploration related. They were always impressive to me, even as
(32:24):
a kid. I went to space camp when I was
in like sixth grade, and I was that nerd, right,
and you get this sense of like, oh, there are
all of these different you know, when NASA was set up,
it was purposely set up in different places around the
country so that funding would be sustained.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Right, it was done on purpose. Yeah, in NASA center
spread all over the country. It is inherently inefficient. But
that's not a bad thing in this case.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
For folks who don't know. That's because Congress ideally sets
and decides and eliminates funding according to what they think
their priority should be. And so distributing NASA facilities around
the country sures that there are going to be jobs
in particular communities. And there are four votes to fund
this stuff, right.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
And there's almost not a single county in the United
States that does not have a connection to NASA. Oh well, yeah,
the one that doesn't have too many is Nebraska, but
it has a few, and a big advocate for NASA's
Don Bacon from Nebraska. He's a good guy.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
You just mentioned that people want to cut the NASA budget,
cut the funding budget a what percentage of the larger
federal budget? Is it? By the way, big pet peeve
of mine? So I can't even imagine how big of
a pet peeve this is of yours, This idea that like,
why are we wasting money on space when we have
all these challenges on Earth? Can you walk us through
the reality of what that.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Is that's ancient. That's an ancient concern. First of all,
you can't stop exporing space. We rely on space for all,
for this phone call or this podcast. We could not
do without space assets. The weather you rely on, and
military situational awareness is all about space. We hived off
(34:07):
part of the Air Force into the Space Force because
the space concerns became so significant, and so you can't
not explore space. And then the other thing is everybody
wants to know what's going on on Mars. And then
this perception that every kid, everybody in the world has
(34:29):
now that Earth is this planet that is like Mars,
that's like Venus, that's like Saturn, only different and special
and remarkable, and how did we all get here? And
we've got to be stewards of it and all that
that is a result of space exploration. And if we
were to find evidence of life on another world or
(34:51):
stranger still, something alive on another world, it would change
the course of history. Everybody everywhere would feel different, diferently
about being a living thing. Everybody would just feel differently
about being alive. Not saying we'd all start driving on
the left in or something, but it would change history,
(35:15):
and we do it for an extraordinary small fraction of
the federal budget. You know, it's it's barely zero point
eight percent of the federal budget, and then the planetary
division within NASA is nine percent of that.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Well, that's min a skill.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
It's just very very small fraction of the of our
intellect and treasure. And you ask people on the street
how much how big is the NASA budget, They'll say
ten percent.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
They're off by effect iated.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Well, yeah, because it is such an important part of
what I like to call and Casey Dryer art policy
guy who likes to call the American story, is such
an important part of the American story. And everybody understand
South Africa has a space program, Vietnam has a space
(36:08):
for Mexico is a space for Australia has a space program.
Because everybody realizes the value of exploring space to your
overall national treasure.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
So that's us now, a sky full of satellites, hearts
full of hope, and a space program in desperate need
of more funding. What's next is our future mutually assured
destruction or mutually assured cooperation. We'll be back to the
future of the space race. Sorry too After this when
(36:45):
we're talking about exploring Mars, whether it's to find hopefully
life there or elsewhere, is that something that NASA ideally
is investing in or is it some of these private companies.
Cause I feel like there's so much conversation now about
rare mens and resources we can harvest from these places.
Are they the same conversation or the different conversation.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Well, if you're asking me, and I got the impression
you were, I was, I like to remind people there's
a lot of platinum on Earth. When you say let's
get an asteroid made of essentially stainless steel and bring
it back somewhere near Earth where we could access it,
(37:27):
that is just it's just a very very difficult and
expensive proposition. More power to you, guys, But I'm not
writ in a check. It's just a very very difficult problem.
And what we advocate for and what I strongly believe
in based on my life experience, is NASA does things
(37:49):
that nobody else can do. There is no business case
for looking for life on Mars unless you know how
to say, oh, it's going to be great to sell
theater tickets. Well maybe, but this expiation is done for
exporation's sake to know more about outer space than to
(38:11):
know more about ourselves. The more you travel, the more
you know about your home. This is the old saying
what's absolutely true about space exploration. Also, you know, people
thought Mars had canals on it and there were Martians
running around doing Martian stuff. It turns out it's not
the case. People thought the Venusians were these great looking
(38:35):
people living in a tropical paradise. It turns out to
be a deadly hellish place, a hellscape on Venus. And
that's where I like to argue that climate change on
Earth was discovered on Venus when, especially James Hansen, doctor
Jim Hanson at Goddard Institute for Space Studies, he was
(38:59):
looking at Venus and realize what's going on in Venus
was happening on Earth. And then all this research came
together and the greenhouse effect, especially due to carbonoxide, was
international news based on that research. So you know, when
we talk about space exploration, it was space exploration that
(39:20):
led to the discovery. In the modern era of climate change,
people exploring other planets realize that we're changing the climate
of this planet. And it does, I admit it does.
Seem incredible. It does not seem possible that the humans
presence on Earth could change the climate of a whole planet.
(39:43):
But we have. And the example from Earth history we
like to give you is cyano blue green algae, cyanobacteria,
where these organisms stumbled on a way to take carbon
dioxide out of the air, metabolize it and make oxygen,
(40:07):
and it changed the course of planetary history. None of
us would be here without the species or its set
of species, and so this bacteria change the whole planet.
So yes, when you have eight going on nine billion
humans breathing and burning the atmosphere, you can change the
climate of a whole planet. But the other side, as
(40:31):
people who used to work in the White House would say,
is just spiritually committed to the idea that climate change
is not happening, that humans are not causing it. Just
committed to the idea that it is our manifest destiny
to dig up old swamps and burn them. I'm talking
about fossil fuels, do.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
The I don't mean to be referring to them as
billionaires as a pejorative, but the a lot of these
big aerospace and space exploration, space tourism companies are run
by individual billionaires. Is their involvement in Mars, in space
exploration and space tourism, in private space flights, like can
(41:15):
that interrupt things like climate research in certain places or
can they work hand in hand? Is it ultimately a
good thing that there's that much new stuff that we're asking?
Speaker 2 (41:27):
Is it a zero sum game?
Speaker 1 (41:28):
Right? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Basically I don't think so. Okay, they're all winners. I
mean just that while the fraction of the US budget
goes to space explorations quite small, the fraction of the
billionaire's budget might be pretty large, but it's still a
small relatively compared to the challenge of climate change is
(41:52):
a relatively small investment everybody and space assets are going
to be involved in addressing climate change. You know, there's
Methane SAT, the satellite that's looking at methane from Earth orbit.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
Ye.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
Right now, there's PACE, this plankton satellite that can tell
by the light reflected off the ocean what species of
plankton are living in the ocean, and how they're getting
moved around by ocean currents, and how ocean chemistry is
being changed by the interaction of these species that plankton
(42:26):
with the salinity in the water and the warmth of
the water, and as they're all being studied from outer space,
from outer space people, we're learning these extraordinary things. So
climate change is a big issue with me, But I
work professionally in space exploration because I've always had this
(42:47):
wonderful passion for knowing our place in space.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
Is the solution to invest in escaping Earth. Did you
hear all these people having that conversation? Is that okay?
Speaker 2 (43:00):
The answer for me is absolutely not. Or put another way,
are you high like okay? The example to ask yourself is,
do you know anybody that goes to live, not goes
to explore, goes to live in Antarctica? No, it's too
cold and there's not enough to eat for a large
(43:22):
popular and nobody's going there to build schools and libraries
and stuff. People go there to learn more about Earth's
climate systems and ice and species that wander around there.
But you're not going to go there to live. And
if you want to run this experiment, go there to live,
and you have to bring your own air because on
Mars there's nothing to breathe. You will notice that immediately. Man,
(43:46):
if you go to Mars and open the cabin door,
you'll suffocate in a few seconds, and that would be undesirable.
And this whole idea of being a two planet species
for the sake of being a two point on a species.
I am not on board with building an exploration base,
a science base on Mars where people come and go. Okay,
(44:09):
perhaps it is an extraordinarily difficult problem. And it's not
only difficult technically and scientifically, it's very difficult financially, Like,
how are you going to make money doing this? Is
a pretty.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
It's a tough nut to crack. So basically you're saying no,
this guy said.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
He wants to go die on Mars, but not on impact. Okay,
I just don't think he's really thought through how difficult
it is to be on Mars. There's no place like home,
there's no place like Earth. Space exploration has shown us
there is no place like Earth. We have to be
(44:51):
stewards of this world. We are all crewmates on.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
Spaceship Earth, and it's worth saving.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
Well if if you want to stay alive, and a
lot of people do. There's a few people I wouldn't mind,
am I right? And so you probably have a few
people in your world, So I might be one of
them and all that, but Earth is extraordinary. There's no
other place to live. Let's go.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
Thanks Bill, Thank you guys. Here we go again as
a production of iHeart Podcasts and SNAFU Media in association
with Kelly and Kelly. Our executive producers are me Kelpen
Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Alyssa Martino, Andy Kim, Pat Kelly,
Chris Kelly, and Dylan Fagan. Caitlin Fontana is our producer
(45:41):
and writer. Dave Shumka is our producer and editor. Additional
writing from Megan tan Our consulting producer is Romin Borsolino.
Tory Smith is our associate producer. Theme music by Chris Kelly,
logo by Matt Gosson. Legal review from Daniel Welsh, Caroline
Johnson and Megan Halson. Special thanks to Glenn, Isaac Dunham,
Adam Horne, Lane Klein and everyone at iHeart Podcasts, but
(46:05):
especially Will Pearson, Carrie Lieberman and Nikki Etoor. Thanks for listening.
See you next week.
Here we Go Again Again. Hey, I'm cal Penn. Welcome
to my new show, Here we Go Again.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Here We Go.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
So you may know me as an actor from Harold
and Kumar House or Designated Survivor. I'm also a former
White House staffer, a NASCAR enthusiast, an eager karaoke participant,
and I guess, as of like five seconds ago, a
podcast host.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
How am I doing so far?
Speaker 1 (00:42):
I'm hosting this podcast because there's one particular question that
I find myself asking a lot these days. Why does
the same shit keep happening? War, labor strikes, getting ghosted
by a hookup. No one wants to be stuck in
a vicious cycle of patterns repeating. So every week we're
going to take a topic from the present, see how
(01:03):
it played out in the past, and try to figure
out what it means for our future. Each episode, I'll
chat with an expert who can help me answer a
different burning question, like why is my plane always delayed?
Are we headed towards another economic crash? Is this rash
what I think it is? Oh? Wait, ignore that last one.
We're asking all the right questions to all the right
(01:25):
people to make you feel at least like nine percent
better about well everything except maybe the rashow. So now
that I got my little introduction out of the way,
I wasn't sure how I wanted to kick off the
first episode, but then I kept looking down at my tattoos.
Some people have tattoos of bald eagles, A lot of
(01:49):
people have tattoos of x's. Most of my tattoos have
something to do with astronomy. That's what you see if
you look at my sleeve, and of that, I'd say
at least half has to do with the NASA Voyager
Golden Record. If you don't know what the Golden Record is,
it's a piece of this spacecraft called the Voyager, launched
in the late nineteen seventies, and the idea there was
that if it's ever found by an intelligent civilization, and
(02:13):
if they can ever decode this record, they would see
only the best of human civilization, biology, science, music, arts, DNA.
To me, space has always been about exploring the unknown,
about possibility, and as the guy with the Voyager tattoo,
I clearly care a lot about the new space race
(02:34):
that's happening right now. From the Cold War to today,
space has really been about flexing power the United States
versus the Soviet Union, for example back in the day,
or more recently, the United States versus China. But now
there's also a new player, private corporations enter the billionaires.
(02:54):
Elon Musk is willing to spend fifteen and a half
billion dollars to be the first to colonize Mars. Jeff
Bezos is funding Blue Origin to keep up. And in
the middle of all of this is still NASA with
a shrinking budget. So here's my question, why do we
keep turning space into a race? And what does that
say about the future of space exploration and about humanity?
(03:16):
This is here we Go again, a show where we
take today's trends and headlines and then ask why does
history keep repeating itself. I'm cal Penn to explore the past, present,
and future of the space race. I knew only one
guy would do. He's super sciency, a spokesperson, an adventurer,
(03:40):
a teacher, and the only adult man I trust to
wear a bow tie. Unlike me, He's got a star
on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the singular William Sandford
n I, better known as my friend Bill Nye, the
science Guy. Welcome Bill it's so good to be here.
Thanks for doing this. Man. I think that most of
us have a very rudimentary understanding of space, and I
(04:04):
will I will preface this by saying, I think I've
shown you my astronomy tattoos, most of which are based
on the Voyager Golden Record, well pulse ar map and
things like that, but that is still you know, for
an actor, that's still a rudimentary like, well.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
You're a citizen of Earth, cal thank you.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
I like to put it that way.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Yeah, well that's what we're going for here.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
So, like, what is the history of the original space race?
In like a minute, And I'm not asking for the
version of like if you and Neil deGrasse Tyson were
in a room together, which I've seen and it's brilliant,
but like, what's the second grade version of that?
Speaker 2 (04:42):
The second grade version is the Soviet Union was created
with this idea that they would be that its system
would be better than the West. And along with that,
we're going to prove that we're better than the West.
We're going to go into space, the ultimate high ground.
(05:02):
So they built sputneck spacecraft and I was a little
little kid nineteen fifty seven and the grown ups are
all very very concerned about this. And so then the
US answered the threat or the historic achievement of Sputnik
by creating NASA, the National Annasa Space Administration, a civilian
(05:27):
space agency that was involved in flying around in space,
which you might think was more of a military thing,
but this became and everybody talks about this turning point
with John Kennedy, whatever else you might think about him,
presented this challenge of putting somebody on the moon before
(05:50):
nineteen seventy, so that became a way to fight the
Cold War, was put somebody on the moon, and the
US did, and not too long in historic terms, after that,
the Soviet Union went out of business, so that was
good for us.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
During Spotnik, the old folks were kind of freaking out.
And I'm curious at that point was there an understanding
or a keen interest in the exploration part of this
or was there a fear about the militarization part.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
So there was both. So the guys at NASA, and
they were mostly men, were arguing that we needed to
understand the cosmos. We needed to understand what cosmic rays are,
We need to understand the processes that create sunlight and stars,
and we need to know more about what I like
(06:45):
to call our place in space. But the reason it
was done was the Cold War. But with that these
extraordinary discoveries were made, and a couple of remarkable things.
In nineteen sixty eight, Bill Anders, this astronaut, took a
picture of the Earth that came to be called Earth Rise,
(07:09):
with the moon and the foreground, and this is where
you see the Earth against the icy blackness of space.
When the aperture of the camera was set to capture
the planet Earth, the stars behind Earth were not bright
enough to show up. So it's stark. There's the Earth,
(07:32):
this planet. And then the thing that struck my grandparents
was the clouds. You see Earth from space, and you
see all these clouds. When you think of Earth before that,
you'd think of it as a classroom globe, no clouds,
and just political boundaries. And the ocean is perfectly uniform
(07:54):
color all around the world, and so on. And so
this changed history, and it was not in my opinion,
and it keep in mind everybody, my opinion is correct.
And so a few years later the Soviet Union was
doing these extraordinary things, and I sent these missions to
Mars they sent missions to Venus all these things, and
(08:16):
along that line, the US was going to keep up,
and the US did, and this led to this extraordinary
event events of the launching of the Voyager spacecraft. And
these were are two spacecraft that did this so called
Grand tour of the Solar System because of the alignment
(08:40):
or the orientation or the places and spaces of the planets.
And the old hilarious joke is the same arrangement of
planets happened during the Atoms administration in eighteen twenty, but
they didn't do anything about it. They didn't send any
spacecraft in eighteen twenty. What were the thinking and so anyway,
(09:02):
I claim this changed the course of history, and this
led to the Golden Record, which is on your tattoo.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Can you tell us more about the Golden Record? Like
I obviously like to think I'm an expert enough that
I tattooed on my body. But my real understanding is
that what it's a group of people, which I think
involved Carl Sagan they made this recording of positive Earth
stuff that we sent up on the Voyager missions. Is
that essentially it?
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Yes, So everybody, let's just talk some more about me.
I happened to be in class with Carl Sagan, famous astronomer.
I happened to be in class. I was a senior
in mechanical engineering school. I took astronomy one oh two
for kicks, just I took a freshman level course because
(09:47):
this guy had become so famous, this Carl Sagan, who's
on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. This is before
Jimmy Fallon, before Jay Leno. Yeah, and Carl Sagan said,
we're to put this record, this phonograph record. And for
the young people listening, I know you're all into vinyl again,
right on, way to go, turn it up loud, Okay,
(10:10):
while you're doing all that. The idea was to send
a phonograph record to Phonograph Records into deep space, and
so then you're gonna put sounds on the phonograph record,
sounds of this extraordinary world Earth. And Carl Sagan said,
don't worry, young people were going to put a rock
and roll song on the record, and he said it's
(10:33):
going to be rollover Beethoven by Chuck Berry. And I
certainly voiced a concern. But this next part may be
a so called constructed memory. I claim I stood up.
This is a part of the semester. You know, there
are people who are so confident in college that they
(10:53):
don't go to class. They just take the tests and
the final, and they write the paper and they just
read the tech don't go to class. I was not
among those people because I felt that Sagan was so entertaining,
he was such an amazing speaker. So I claim I
stood up and I said, Professor Sagan, it's not roll
over Beethoven. The song you want is Johnny be Good
(11:16):
by Chuck Berry. And so I was not the only
guy expressing this sentiment, but I was particularly vocal because
I'm a particular fan of Chuck Berry, and so Chuck
Berry's on the record. I take full credit.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
You're saying that you helped decide what was on the
Golden Record. How did I not know this?
Speaker 2 (11:35):
It's all me, everybody, and it's just you guys. Understand
the dumb luctivity of my life that I happened to
be in this class. First of all, that I got
into this extraordinary university, Cornell, that I got into there
was I'm sure some mistake in the admissions department, but
I happened to be there at this moment in history
(11:59):
of space exploration that changed my life. And so I'm
very thankful, and I tell everybody those two spacecraft are
still flying because they're powered by plutonium. It is extraordinary.
And this is what Carl Sagan used talk about all
the time. Humans in so many ways are not worthy
(12:21):
of respect, like we're just mean spirited, crummy creatures. But
in other ways we can do these extraordinary things and
understand our place in space and try to know where
we came from, and to ponder whether or not we're
(12:42):
alone in the cosmos. These are just extraordinary questions. And
along with that, for Carl Sagan and Andrew and his wife
then and the people that he worked with, they just
wanted everybody to appreciate the beauty that humans appreciate. And
that's what's on the record, the way.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
That you're described. I mean everyone from the astronaut who
took that photograph of Earth from the moon to the
fact that you put Chuck Berry on the Golden Record.
All of the sixties and seventies and eighties, the reputation
that NASA had was almost this glamorous and certainly now
looking back, very fucking cool. Cool group of people who seem,
(13:28):
especially in retrospect given the world we live in now,
very hopeful, very aspirational, and I think we think a
lot about that, but also think about the competition that
has come to dominate space that then kind of ignores
the cooperation. What I'm getting at here is at what
point did the International Space Station come into this conversation?
(13:51):
Can you talk a little bit about how it started
and then which countries cooperated with it? Did it come
out of this same idea of hey, we can do
amazing things together. Let's put music and send out there.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Well, another thing along this line, talking about Carl Sagan
again this mythic astronomer, I say mythic. He's a real person,
but he's so influential, Like for example, you mentioned earlier
before we started, you mentioned Neil deGrasse Tyson. As you know,
Steve Martin said, personal friend of mine and me. We
(14:21):
probably would not be doing what we're doing without the
creation of NASA and without Carl Sagan and his influence.
So along this line, Carl Sagan started the planetary sieting
because he and his colleagues felt that public interest in
space was very high, but government support of it was
(14:44):
not especially high that would never happen again. That's the
same thing's going on now. And they were very concerned
about nuclear war, and they wanted very much to engage
the Soviet Union, and so there was this hand shaken space.
Now I'm doing this for memory. I should look this up.
(15:06):
I should have it at my brain for tips LEONEV
and Allen. That's not quite right.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
I got it. It's a Leonov and Stafford astronaut Thomas
Stafford and Russian cosmonaut Aleck Say Leonov.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Right, they shook hands in space, an astronaut and a cosmonaut,
and this was going to be okay, cold war over
shirk hands in space, Let's go. And that led to
the International Space Station. And for those of you who remember,
for many years the only way to get up and
down to the International Space Station was on a Russian
(15:42):
rocket because the Russian rockets were just big, heavy and reliable,
and they so are. But the Space Shuttle was created
to get people up and down to the space station.
The user words shuttle like you're going to go, you know,
on a bus every day. But it turned out to
be fantastically expensive. But that dream or that vision of
(16:03):
using space exploration, to establish international relations, to prevent an
international conflict.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Is still with us.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
You talk to any US astronaut, he or she speaks Russian,
you talk to any cosmonaut, he or she speaks English
because they train together. They still cooperate. With all the
other stuff that's going on, sabotaging underwater natural gas lines,
conflict in Ukraine, all the other sort of Cold war
(16:37):
knock on stuff that's going on, there's still international cooperation
in space. It's remarkable.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Welcome back to here we go again with me Calpen,
your host and our guest, the wonderful Bill n I. Okay, Bill, so,
I love how you ended that last segment with the
reality that that no matter what conflicts are happening in
the world, we're still cooperating in the space station. But okay,
what about the space racing Now, I'm curious what's the
same in what's changed? And especially that original space race
(17:13):
Did it truly ever end? Does it continue in a
version of its original form? Today?
Speaker 2 (17:18):
It doesn't continue in the original form in that it's
not the US versus the Soviets or Russians anymore. Now
people are just as far as space racing, people are
just beginning to acknowledge the importance of China, and the
Chinese National Space Agency is doing extraordinary things, and they're
doing them for the same reason everybody else did. First
(17:41):
of all, it's national pride. You get Taykonts up there
in their own space station doing their own cool experiments.
They want to go to the south pole of the
Moon because there is nominally an engineering reason to go there.
That is to say, people suspect strongly there's enough ice
in the regolith. That's a fabulous word, that the rocky
(18:05):
surface of the Moon that you could use solar panels
to make electricity, turn the water into hydrogen and oxygen gas,
and then liquid hydrogen and oxygen recombine them and have
a rocket from the Moon run by rocket fuel made
of moon stuff. So I know it was okay, it's
a lot. But the other reason to go to the
(18:25):
Moon is national pride and plant the flag and so on.
But then that's this international space race that's just getting
acknowledged here in the US circles since that Congressman Wolf
retired that you don't have the same but he just
was bringing up all the time.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
So Congressman Wolf, for those who don't know was the
author of the Wolf Amendment, which prevented and prevents still
the US from cooperating with China in space exploration.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
But then the other space race is these billionaires rather
who are going at it with their own companies. And
so they're doing it for a couple of reasons. First
of all, their own pride and space intrigues. Everybody, everybody,
I think, goes through a period of wanting to be
an astronaut and fly in space. And we all embrace
(19:16):
science fiction where you go to other worlds and do
these extraordinary things and compare the other world to our
world and wonder if we're alone in the universe. That's
all in there, and then there's real money to be made.
A lot of people I speak with are not aware
of the extraordinary amount of money that's spent in space. Wait,
(19:38):
all the money that's spent in space is really spent
on Earth. Wait a second. Yeah. So the SpaceX, for example,
is huge business with the Air Force, Space Force, NASA
along with its own starlink thing. Man. They launch rockets
a couple three times a week, these very reliable Falcon
(19:59):
nine rockets, and they do it for business to dominate
global communications in lower author and the technology has got
to the point where you can do that. You know,
it's like a cell phone signal. You know, when you
drive around the cell phone, you can go from one
cell to another and the system hands it from one
hands your phone call from one cell to another cell seamlessly.
(20:23):
Now these you know, these spacecraft are going in the
English units. It's over seventeen thousand miles an hour and
they're handing the communications signal from one to another. It's
really amazing.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
The number of satellites that allow us to do what
we do was kind of put into scope. I did
a USO tour to the Space Force space in Greenland
at Tuley a couple of years ago.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
What time of year were you know.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
I mean it didn't matter, it was greatly.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
You'd have to kill me, it was.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
It was so well, it was winter because it was cold,
and it was dark. It was dark the whole time
we were there. And I mean two things that I
walked away with the thing on my list. You're never
allowed to have your own schedule when you go on
these USO tours, nor should you. I guess you're giving
your time. But I really wanted to see the Greenland Telescope,
which is part of the event Horizon Telescope, and so
I like DMD the folks who were working on it directly.
(21:16):
I found out who they were, followed them on Instagram.
They were gracious and excited that I was coming, and so, as.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Carl Sagan said all the time, when you're in love,
you want to tell the world. They wanted to show
you their equipment, right, it was very cool.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
They wanted to show me the equipment, and they were
from all over the world. I mean, these these these
incredible scientists. But the second thing that I saw, I
did you know, worked in government years ago. No longer
have a clearance, so I couldn't see everything. But it
seemed like one of the big purposes of Space Force,
especially at that base, was to track satellites all over
(21:50):
the world and make sure that they don't crash into.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Each other, a huge problem.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
And I was like, this is crazy there. And of course,
I mean when you think about it, exactly what you said,
the fact that you can you know, you can listen
to everything no matter where you're in the world. I mean,
how do we think on my phone telling me which
subway line to take and knowing where I am and
whether I'm changing trains like all of that is because
of all of this. You've also spent some time at
a Space Force space Colorado, right last year?
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Yeah, went to Butler.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Yeah, so is that the same. Are these big concerns.
That is why space Force exists.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
It is the concerness of concerns, and so you hear
it express different nouns. But Kissler, a guy named Kissler,
did this analysis the Kissler effect, the Kissler syndrome, the
Kissler catastrophe, where he pointed out, when you start running
the spacecraft into each other, you'll create orbital debris on
(22:43):
a global scale that you cannot clean up. This is
trying to catch a bullet with a bullet, as the
saying goes, and you just can't. I mean, it almost
certainly cannot. And every year at science fairs people come
up with the giant nets and but it's just a
huge concern. And so were you around when people's Republic
(23:08):
of China Army shot down one of their own satellites.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
This was literally my next question for you. I was
around for it, and I remember it being shocking, at
least in some of the astronomy blogs. That I read.
And then so just this danger of can it pierce
the space station? Will it affect other satellites? What was
that about?
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Well, they were showing off, is my understanding. Now we
could do this, We could shoot down satellites. We could
shoot down your satellite. So you better have a treaty
with us. You better not presume we're not a spacefaring
nation with extraordinary technical capability. Okay. So in response to that,
you may remember the US shot down its own satellite,
(23:51):
this U CARS, which was an acronym upper atmospheric something
something research system just take over like the word even
the word NASA is a word now it's not an
acronym for many people, National aeron otion, space and industriction.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
So the Chinese shot down a satellite kind of as
a display of power, or what happened.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Next along this line, then the US shot down its
own satellite to show this is how you do it.
You don't make a mess. You shoot it down, you know, carefully.
And I just remember this that it was shot down
from a missile on a ship at sea, a US
(24:35):
ship at sea, and they couldn't shoot it down sort
of same day because the ocean was too rough. They didn't.
They didn't want the initial trajectory of the missile to
be messed up by the motion of the ship. And
I just remember thinking, Okay, the Cold War will be
(24:58):
once the Hot War starts, so it'll be really good
as long as the ocean has come. Like, this is
serious business. When you start weaponizing outer space, things can
potentially go really wrong.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
I mean, so then militarization is still it sounds like
a major aim. You're basically describing war games in space
right now.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Well, sort, but what is your what's the name of
the podcast?
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Here we go again.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Yes, So there was an anti Ballistic Missile treaty right
long about nineteen sixty eight, because people realize this is
not winnable. Man, if we start throwing weapons this expression
so are called mutually assured destruction MAD. You can't do this.
If everybody's in on it, then we can take a meeting.
If you pretend that it's a winnable situation, then you're
(25:47):
just going to keep escalating. And this was something that
Carl Sagan and the guys in the nineteen seventies and
eighties talked about all the time. Okay, let's have a treaty.
Ge wis Man. And then if we start blowing up
or knocking apart satellites in space. I worked at a
company that was involved in the KKV, the Kinetic killed vehicle.
You just run a satellite into another satellite and have
(26:10):
it shatter. Yeah, it's not winnable. Let's have a treaty.
And yet it's come all the way back around. People
are talking about warfare and space weapon putting weapons in
space the ultimate high ground, and man, it would be
much better if everybody got along. It's just it is
not a winnable thing. And this thing in Ukraine is
(26:35):
what I like to call the extended dance mix of
World War Two. It's the same bunch of people fighting
over the same land, and it's a land war in Europe,
just like we had in my parents' day, and everybody
got together and resolved that. But right now it's not
clear that everybody's getting together to resolve it this time, so.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Things are repeating themselves. The one is it fair to
say the one big difference is the role of billionaires
in the private space sector that didn't exist in the eighties.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
Yes, you're right, But with that said, you know it's
a government investment in weapons that you know, the Space
Force goes back and forth all the time about which
rocket company to use and who to sign contracts with
and all that stuff. But that aside Calah. The reason
we love space exploration is it brings out the best
(27:30):
in us. Yes, we solve problems that have never been
solved before. But on the way, people realized the extraordinary
nature of planet Earth, that we live on this extraordinary
world that is but one world in this literally unimaginable
(27:52):
vastness of creation. Nobody can really imagine how big the
universe is, how big, how many galaxies there are, and
how many planets there must be. And this leads us
to the two deep questions, where did we come from?
(28:12):
And are we alone in the universe? And I say
all the time, if you meet somebody who says they've
never wondered, that they are lying to your face.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
You know, obviously all of us have thought about the
philosophical part the exploration, the part about whether you know
how it is possible that we're here, and the idea
that you can't wrap your head around the infinite nature
of all of these galaxies.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
So there's three things that keep me in this game.
First of all I want to explore. I claim that
our ancestors who did not have the drive to explore
are not our ancestors, but guys. If you had a
tribe where the men and women did not want to
go over the hill to see what's on the other side,
(29:00):
they got out competed by the people who did want
to go over the hill and see what's on the
other side, the other valley, the other resources, and what
have you. So I claim that's deep within us. Then
the other thing is I want to find evidence of
life on another world. I want that to happen while
I'm alive. So the places to look are Mars, and
(29:25):
this is I'm talking about evidence of life. So it'd
probably be the equivalent of fossil bacteria locked in the
mud rocks of an ancient river basin. On Mars, strangers
still though near the equator of Mars. Maybe there's some
really salty slush under the sand, and there are Martian microbes,
(29:49):
Mars crobes still doing their thing, like alive things that
we could find with spacecraft. I mean, it's extraordinary. Then
the other place right now is Europa, the moon of Jupiter.
There's twice as much ocean water as Earth has. If
you have ocean water for four and a half billion years,
is there something alive on Europos It's amazing a question.
Then the other thing, the third thing is do not
(30:11):
want to get hit with an asteroid. It's a real thing.
It's not just science fiction. In twenty twenty nine, nobody's
talking about it much yet, but oh we will be
a office a name for an Egyptian god of chaos
and anxiety. It's going to come not closer to the Moon,
(30:33):
it's going to come closer than the geosynchronous satellites on Friday,
the thirteenth of April twenty twenty nine. People are going
to be talking about it. And so we want it
planetary society. We want it to be a dress rehearsal
for international cooperation on deflecting an asteroid or so called
(30:55):
mitigating the effects of an asteroid. If you knew exactly
or pretty much where it was going to land, you
could get everybody out of the way. But if it's
going to land in Paris, like that would be bad.
Like you get everybody out of the way, but you
still crushed a major international city.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
How far out would we know where it's going to
land if it is going to land.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Oh, this is the dark art, my friends. No, so
thirty years would be really good. And right now I
don't know how serious these people are, but right now
there's an effort to cut NASA's funding overall by twenty
five percent, half or more of the science budget so
(31:38):
called Science Mission Directorate SMD within NASA. So that is
not in anybody's best interest. That is shortsighted and not
being able to find asteroids using the NEO Survey or
neuarth Object Survey Mission and other ground based telescope coordinated systems,
(32:00):
is you don't want to stop doing that?
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Well, that was sort of the big question I had
for you, obviously as a Planetary Society member, and you
should all join the advocacy that is around funding for
NASA and funding for STEM and all things astronomy and
exploration related. They were always impressive to me, even as
(32:24):
a kid. I went to space camp when I was
in like sixth grade, and I was that nerd, right,
and you get this sense of like, oh, there are
all of these different you know, when NASA was set up,
it was purposely set up in different places around the
country so that funding would be sustained.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Right, it was done on purpose. Yeah, in NASA center
spread all over the country. It is inherently inefficient. But
that's not a bad thing in this case.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
For folks who don't know. That's because Congress ideally sets
and decides and eliminates funding according to what they think
their priority should be. And so distributing NASA facilities around
the country sures that there are going to be jobs
in particular communities. And there are four votes to fund
this stuff, right.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
And there's almost not a single county in the United
States that does not have a connection to NASA. Oh well, yeah,
the one that doesn't have too many is Nebraska, but
it has a few, and a big advocate for NASA's
Don Bacon from Nebraska. He's a good guy.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
You just mentioned that people want to cut the NASA budget,
cut the funding budget a what percentage of the larger
federal budget? Is it? By the way, big pet peeve
of mine? So I can't even imagine how big of
a pet peeve this is of yours, This idea that like,
why are we wasting money on space when we have
all these challenges on Earth? Can you walk us through
the reality of what that.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Is that's ancient. That's an ancient concern. First of all,
you can't stop exporing space. We rely on space for all,
for this phone call or this podcast. We could not
do without space assets. The weather you rely on, and
military situational awareness is all about space. We hived off
(34:07):
part of the Air Force into the Space Force because
the space concerns became so significant, and so you can't
not explore space. And then the other thing is everybody
wants to know what's going on on Mars. And then
this perception that every kid, everybody in the world has
(34:29):
now that Earth is this planet that is like Mars,
that's like Venus, that's like Saturn, only different and special
and remarkable, and how did we all get here? And
we've got to be stewards of it and all that
that is a result of space exploration. And if we
were to find evidence of life on another world or
(34:51):
stranger still, something alive on another world, it would change
the course of history. Everybody everywhere would feel different, diferently
about being a living thing. Everybody would just feel differently
about being alive. Not saying we'd all start driving on
the left in or something, but it would change history,
(35:15):
and we do it for an extraordinary small fraction of
the federal budget. You know, it's it's barely zero point
eight percent of the federal budget, and then the planetary
division within NASA is nine percent of that.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Well, that's min a skill.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
It's just very very small fraction of the of our
intellect and treasure. And you ask people on the street
how much how big is the NASA budget, They'll say
ten percent.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
They're off by effect iated.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Well, yeah, because it is such an important part of
what I like to call and Casey Dryer art policy
guy who likes to call the American story, is such
an important part of the American story. And everybody understand
South Africa has a space program, Vietnam has a space
(36:08):
for Mexico is a space for Australia has a space program.
Because everybody realizes the value of exploring space to your
overall national treasure.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
So that's us now, a sky full of satellites, hearts
full of hope, and a space program in desperate need
of more funding. What's next is our future mutually assured
destruction or mutually assured cooperation. We'll be back to the
future of the space race. Sorry too After this when
(36:45):
we're talking about exploring Mars, whether it's to find hopefully
life there or elsewhere, is that something that NASA ideally
is investing in or is it some of these private companies.
Cause I feel like there's so much conversation now about
rare mens and resources we can harvest from these places.
Are they the same conversation or the different conversation.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Well, if you're asking me, and I got the impression
you were, I was, I like to remind people there's
a lot of platinum on Earth. When you say let's
get an asteroid made of essentially stainless steel and bring
it back somewhere near Earth where we could access it,
(37:27):
that is just it's just a very very difficult and
expensive proposition. More power to you, guys, But I'm not
writ in a check. It's just a very very difficult problem.
And what we advocate for and what I strongly believe
in based on my life experience, is NASA does things
(37:49):
that nobody else can do. There is no business case
for looking for life on Mars unless you know how
to say, oh, it's going to be great to sell
theater tickets. Well maybe, but this expiation is done for
exporation's sake to know more about outer space than to
(38:11):
know more about ourselves. The more you travel, the more
you know about your home. This is the old saying
what's absolutely true about space exploration. Also, you know, people
thought Mars had canals on it and there were Martians
running around doing Martian stuff. It turns out it's not
the case. People thought the Venusians were these great looking
(38:35):
people living in a tropical paradise. It turns out to
be a deadly hellish place, a hellscape on Venus. And
that's where I like to argue that climate change on
Earth was discovered on Venus when, especially James Hansen, doctor
Jim Hanson at Goddard Institute for Space Studies, he was
(38:59):
looking at Venus and realize what's going on in Venus
was happening on Earth. And then all this research came
together and the greenhouse effect, especially due to carbonoxide, was
international news based on that research. So you know, when
we talk about space exploration, it was space exploration that
(39:20):
led to the discovery. In the modern era of climate change,
people exploring other planets realize that we're changing the climate
of this planet. And it does, I admit it does.
Seem incredible. It does not seem possible that the humans
presence on Earth could change the climate of a whole planet.
(39:43):
But we have. And the example from Earth history we
like to give you is cyano blue green algae, cyanobacteria,
where these organisms stumbled on a way to take carbon
dioxide out of the air, metabolize it and make oxygen,
(40:07):
and it changed the course of planetary history. None of
us would be here without the species or its set
of species, and so this bacteria change the whole planet.
So yes, when you have eight going on nine billion
humans breathing and burning the atmosphere, you can change the
climate of a whole planet. But the other side, as
(40:31):
people who used to work in the White House would say,
is just spiritually committed to the idea that climate change
is not happening, that humans are not causing it. Just
committed to the idea that it is our manifest destiny
to dig up old swamps and burn them. I'm talking
about fossil fuels, do.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
The I don't mean to be referring to them as
billionaires as a pejorative, but the a lot of these
big aerospace and space exploration, space tourism companies are run
by individual billionaires. Is their involvement in Mars, in space
exploration and space tourism, in private space flights, like can
(41:15):
that interrupt things like climate research in certain places or
can they work hand in hand? Is it ultimately a
good thing that there's that much new stuff that we're asking?
Speaker 2 (41:27):
Is it a zero sum game?
Speaker 1 (41:28):
Right? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Basically I don't think so. Okay, they're all winners. I
mean just that while the fraction of the US budget
goes to space explorations quite small, the fraction of the
billionaire's budget might be pretty large, but it's still a
small relatively compared to the challenge of climate change is
(41:52):
a relatively small investment everybody and space assets are going
to be involved in addressing climate change. You know, there's
Methane SAT, the satellite that's looking at methane from Earth orbit.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
Ye.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
Right now, there's PACE, this plankton satellite that can tell
by the light reflected off the ocean what species of
plankton are living in the ocean, and how they're getting
moved around by ocean currents, and how ocean chemistry is
being changed by the interaction of these species that plankton
(42:26):
with the salinity in the water and the warmth of
the water, and as they're all being studied from outer space,
from outer space people, we're learning these extraordinary things. So
climate change is a big issue with me, But I
work professionally in space exploration because I've always had this
(42:47):
wonderful passion for knowing our place in space.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
Is the solution to invest in escaping Earth. Did you
hear all these people having that conversation? Is that okay?
Speaker 2 (43:00):
The answer for me is absolutely not. Or put another way,
are you high like okay? The example to ask yourself is,
do you know anybody that goes to live, not goes
to explore, goes to live in Antarctica? No, it's too
cold and there's not enough to eat for a large
(43:22):
popular and nobody's going there to build schools and libraries
and stuff. People go there to learn more about Earth's
climate systems and ice and species that wander around there.
But you're not going to go there to live. And
if you want to run this experiment, go there to live,
and you have to bring your own air because on
Mars there's nothing to breathe. You will notice that immediately. Man,
(43:46):
if you go to Mars and open the cabin door,
you'll suffocate in a few seconds, and that would be undesirable.
And this whole idea of being a two planet species
for the sake of being a two point on a species.
I am not on board with building an exploration base,
a science base on Mars where people come and go. Okay,
(44:09):
perhaps it is an extraordinarily difficult problem. And it's not
only difficult technically and scientifically, it's very difficult financially, Like,
how are you going to make money doing this? Is
a pretty.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
It's a tough nut to crack. So basically you're saying no,
this guy said.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
He wants to go die on Mars, but not on impact. Okay,
I just don't think he's really thought through how difficult
it is to be on Mars. There's no place like home,
there's no place like Earth. Space exploration has shown us
there is no place like Earth. We have to be
(44:51):
stewards of this world. We are all crewmates on.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
Spaceship Earth, and it's worth saving.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
Well if if you want to stay alive, and a
lot of people do. There's a few people I wouldn't mind,
am I right? And so you probably have a few
people in your world, So I might be one of
them and all that, but Earth is extraordinary. There's no
other place to live. Let's go.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
Thanks Bill, Thank you guys. Here we go again as
a production of iHeart Podcasts and SNAFU Media in association
with Kelly and Kelly. Our executive producers are me Kelpen
Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Alyssa Martino, Andy Kim, Pat Kelly,
Chris Kelly, and Dylan Fagan. Caitlin Fontana is our producer
(45:41):
and writer. Dave Shumka is our producer and editor. Additional
writing from Megan tan Our consulting producer is Romin Borsolino.
Tory Smith is our associate producer. Theme music by Chris Kelly,
logo by Matt Gosson. Legal review from Daniel Welsh, Caroline
Johnson and Megan Halson. Special thanks to Glenn, Isaac Dunham,
Adam Horne, Lane Klein and everyone at iHeart Podcasts, but
(46:05):
especially Will Pearson, Carrie Lieberman and Nikki Etoor. Thanks for listening.
See you next week.
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