August 26, 2025 • 37 mins
Wes and Shawn are joined by Chief Technologist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and author Les Johnson to talk about the symbiotic relationship of science and science fiction and his upcoming appearance at Dragon Con as both a scientist and an author.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics,
and space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been
known to learn about astronomical phenomenon, the scientific method, and
expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar asterism and uranus. Listen,
that's your own risk.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Go ahead. When made of Stars, medium Stars, Madies, When
meda stars.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
You could be from high would New Mexicomus.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
We're on.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Stars when we are Made of Stars. I'm Wes Carrol.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
And I'm doctor Sean Cruisin from Columbus State University's Coca
Cola Space.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Science Centerles Johnson is more than just your friendly neighborhood
rocket scientist. He's the chief technologist at NASA's Marshall Space
Flight Center. He's an accomplished author, and he'll be appearing
at dragon Con Labor Day weekend in Atlanta. Most importantly,
he's appearing now on Made of Stars. Les Johnson Welcome.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
Hey, thanks for having me on the show. I'm glad
to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
We're excited to have you on because this is the
time of year when we start talking about events like
dragon Con, and a lot of people they don't have
a great understanding of what this convention is. They think
of the old Shatner sketch with on SNL where he's
calling everybody nerds and telling them to get a life.
Dragon Con is so much bigger than that. It's this
(01:43):
popular arts convention. It's huge, but it has so many
components to it that include actual science. It's not just
science fiction. It's actual science, and they've kind of grown
these science tracks over the years, and that's part of
why you're there. You're also there for the science fiction
side of it. I'm sure with the books that you've written,
(02:04):
but this isn't your first time at dragon Con. I
know you've been there before. So if you could talk
just a little bit about your experiences at dragon Con.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
Sure, I'll be glad to do that. The first thing
I have to do is make it clear that anything
I say is my own opinion, not that of my employer,
because I go to dragon Con and write books on
my own time, and I'm not representing NASA when I
do that. Now that I've got the disclaimer aside, I
love dragon Con. I've actually been going since the mid nineties.
If you can believe that, I took a break when
(02:36):
my kids were little. There were some things there that
were not suitable for children at times, especially late at
night on Saturday, and so I didn't go when they
were young. But I've been going back for the last
decade or so and just love it. Me and seventy
thousand of my good friends. Right, it's a real spectacle.
I typically participate in the space track. I've been in
the science track this year. I'll be also in the
(02:57):
Apocalypse Rising track, which is to be a trip, the
writer's track, and you meet some of the great people,
and the costumes are awesome. It's basically one big festival
the whole weekend. But the thing that I don't think
listeners who might hear about Dragon con appreciate unless you
actually go, is it's just just not about people in costume.
(03:20):
You have some of the most meaningful conversations you're going
to have all year long with experts in many fields
talking about the future and the impact of technology on
the future, where the society's going, foreign events. I mean,
it's incredible as well as all the nerdy stuff. I mean,
it all kind of rolls together.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
And you being there as a writer. It's just one
of those situations where You're really kind of catching it
from two different sides, aren't.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
You catching it? It's probably a good term for part
of it, because you know, the writer. If you ever
make a mistake or say something in a book or
there's a misspelling, you hear about it from your readers,
and I'll hear about it at Dragon Con. But no,
I love that because I kind of live in both
those worlds. I've been a science fiction fan long before
I became a science fiction and writer. I was a
science fiction fan before I became a physicist, and for me,
(04:10):
it all merges, and the persona that I have and
who I am is a mixture of all of that. Writer,
science fiction reader, science fiction movie fan, as well as scientist.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Is there extra pressure as a scientist with your daytime job,
your day job that makes it so that you feel
like you have extra pressure to keep your science fiction
as grounded as possible in that real science.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
Well, I do not, completely though. When I'm writing some
of my hard science science fiction works, like the trilogy
I'm currently working on with Travis Taylor, my co author
of the Orion's Arm series, we want to keep a
really good story being told, but we make sure that
all the technology and the science in the background is plausible,
not necessarily what we can do today in engineering, but
(04:59):
something that's not physically impossible. Because we're marketing the books
as hard science, which means it's got to be believable,
and if we put something in there that's dubious, we'll
definitely hear about it, and that's bad. I don't want
to hear stuff like that. I want people to say,
can we really do that? And then that turns on
the teacher in me that likes to go in and explain, well,
(05:20):
as a matter of fact, we might be able to
do that, And that's the beauty of science fiction, is
the what if and such. But I also write. I
wrote a space opera book, and that's kind of a
subgenre of science fiction where the science isn't as important
as the grand sweeping story of an interstellar empire kind
of thing thing. So it just depends on what I'm writing.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
You and I share. I think we share some passions, certainly,
but we also share kind of an endeavor where we're
getting other people interested in science, and I think that
we know that there's a nexus point between science and
science fiction that those people who enjoy science fiction. Also
enjoy pursuing the hard science end of things. And really
(06:02):
science fiction has inspired so many people to go into
various careers in science. And I think you have some
background yourself and that can you talk about those years
and what inspired you to actually become a science technologist
at NASA?
Speaker 4 (06:19):
I sure can. It's a good question, Thanks for asking.
It goes way back. I was a young child when
Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. This gives away my age.
I was seven years old watching on a black and white,
grainy television. You know, when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.
My parents probably woke me up. I was in my
footy pajamas. There's something who knows? And I got excited
(06:39):
about it and started kind of paying attention to what
was happening in the space race at the time. And
then when I was about twelve, that's when it happened.
My sisters let me stay up late with them on
a Friday night, probably till ten o'clock to watch reruns
of Star Trek O MG. I was hooked. I decided
I want to build the Enterprise, so I started reading
(07:04):
every science fiction book I could get at the school.
Anything my parents would buy me at the bookstore and
started reading popular science books. Isaac Asimov was a big
inspiration with both his popular science and science fiction books,
and it was all from there I decided I wanted
to be a physicist. I wanted to work for NASA,
and I wanted to help make basically the enterprise of reality.
(07:28):
So that has been I've been driven with that passion
since I was middle school. And you go back to
my reunions, and I'll be going to one this fall
in my hometown up in Ashland, Kentucky, and none of
the people there were surprised that I ended up with
the job that I had. Many of them would tell you,
I knew that when you were in sixth grade, you know,
(07:51):
not just my inspiration.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Just a quick follow up question to that, do you
this is kind of taking onto something you said a
moment ago where you get a lot of fear feed
back from your readers if they think that something isn't
quite right. Do you think that reading and really immersing
yourself in science fiction helps develop your critical thinking skills,
something that is so important for science students as they go.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
Forward, critical thinking skills. I think for some it can
some people it's just escape its literature, right, they just
want to read it and they want to escape and
enjoy the ride. But I think there are a lot
of people like I was that when I read science
fiction and encountering an intriguing idea, you glom onto it.
(08:34):
And I can give a professional example. I've been the
lead here at NASA Marshall for many years now in
our work to develop and fly something called a solar sale,
a type of propulsion system that uses a large, lightweight
thin reflector looks like a piece of aluminum foil and
in space photons light from the Sun reflect from that,
(08:54):
and as they reflect from it, it's like little bb
shooting at a canvas. Right. They impart a little bit
of momentum intal move so it's a propulsion system. Well,
I remember reading a story when I was in high
school by two of the great science fiction writer collaborators,
Larry Niven and Jerry Pornell, and the book was called
The Mote Mote in God's Eye. It was about an
(09:16):
alien invasion of Earth and the aliens were coming driven
on these big sales, driven by laser light that allowed
them to get really high speeds for interstellar travel. I
thought that was so cool. Well, in my career in
the early two thousands, I had the opportunity to start
working on solar sales and so I granted it and
(09:38):
I said, I want to do that. And the reason
I wanted to do it was because I think, ultimately
that might be how we go to the stars. And
I was inspired to do that by reading the works
of Nivin and Pornell. So it really fed directly into
my career, and it was something I read in high school.
Of course, I read other books about it since then
and found out they're physically possible, but the technology is
(10:01):
now possible to build our fort sales. They won't go
to the stars, but their descendants might, so it's exciting.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
More with Les Johnson after a quick break. Do you
(10:34):
ever have moments where you're at a place like Dragon
Con and you're talking to two fans that are actually,
you know, interested in pursuing science as a career and
get this thought or feedback that your writing may be
influencing that next scientist, the way that the writing that
you read influenced you.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
Well, I don't I don't want to sound braggardly, but
there have been cases where I've had people come who
are in the field who told me that some of
my books influenced that. There was an entrepreneur who came
to Huntsville, Gosh, by the way, which is great. Rocket
City is a great, great place to be if your
(11:13):
listeners haven't visited Huntsville. We've got a great space museum.
It's a wonderful place to be. And we were having
lunch and he was proposing a payload for the International
Space Station, and I was not the deciding official. He
had already met with all the people about that work,
and he just contacted me saying he'd read some of
my stuff and he'd like to talk. And he took
(11:34):
out a copy of a book I had written a
few years before that and said, hey, let's I want
you to know and I want your signature on this
book because this book inspired me to write the proposal
as being considered for Space Station. That payload actually went
up to Space Station. So I had a direct encounter
that was really memorable for me, and that I think
that was the first time someone had directly attributed their
(11:58):
career direction and something that were working on to something
I had written. And that's where I realized I better
be careful what I say because people are going to
listen to me.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Well, and it's just semantics, I know, but technically you're
not bragging. If I asked the question so I was,
you know that way, it's technically you're not bragging.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
Okay, I'll take that.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
So as you're thinking through that inspiration, and you know,
I think that's a great story, by the way, I
just I just love to hear that as you're thinking
through that inspiration and knowing that there are a number
of our students here at Columbus State University who've listened
to this podcast, and also just other students you might
be talking to out there, students who might be flirting
(12:40):
with the idea of pursuing a career that might lead
them to working either with NASA or at NASA directly,
what kind of advice or what kind of helpful hints
do you have for them in terms of like pursuing
that career and what kinds of things do they need
to be thinking about along that journey.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
The number one thing I hear from people, by far,
it may not be the majority, but it's certainly a
plurality of comments along those lines is I would love
to have pursued a career in science, but I couldn't
do the math. And I hear that a lot, and
that makes me very sad because I have a personal
(13:20):
story that it relates to that I wanted to be
a physicist. As I said, I've wanted to do that
since I was twelve. When I went to college and
I took in first semester freshman year CALC one. I
barely got to see, and I think I got to
see because the professor took pity on me because he
knew I was so motivated and I was terrified because
(13:43):
I had placed all of my dreams in doing that career,
and I knew I had to understand calculus. And so
for the second semester, my faculty advisor happened to be
in the math department and he said, less, I'm teaching
CALC two next semester. I'll set up a weekly tutoring
session with you, and as I teach a little different
(14:05):
style than the profit you had for calkwe and I
will be honest with you. Don't give up your career
goals yet, don't change your major. Let's see how this
works out. And his name is doctor Charles Haggard, and
he recently passed, and this was at Transylvania University up
in Kentucky, small liberal arts college, and he met with
me every week to tutor me, and about halfway through
(14:27):
the semester, I got it, and I ended up going
on and taking all the calculus, differential equations, partial different
all the stuff you got to do to become a physicist.
But I was almost giving up because the math I
did not understand at first, and had to work really
really hard at it and get help every single week,
(14:51):
until finally finally my brain clicked and was like, oh,
I get it, and I was able to start figuring
out how to do it. And so the advice I
give to young people is if you get intimidated by math,
you may not be able to do it, but you
may not have had the right instructor or the right teacher,
or you might need a little bit of help. Don't
(15:12):
be afraid to ask for it, because if that's your dream,
don't let that stand in a way.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
I think that's such an important advice, and it's kind
of heartwarming to hear you tell that story, because myself
and I have other colleagues that I've heard from We
had a similar journey. I decided on physics a little
bit later in life. I was already in my twenties,
and then I decided, well, wait a minute, I was
in a different major track, and I really wanted to
pursue physics, but like you, I didn't have I didn't
(15:40):
have that solid foundation in mathematics, and so I had
to begin at a very low level and kind of
fight my way up through math. And so I do
actually share that same message with my students, but it's
fantastic to hear a person in your position share that
same message, which is, hey, you can do this. You
may have to find the right now, you may have
to work extra hours, you have to put that extra
(16:04):
effort into it, but it is achievable, and don't let
that stop you from pursuing what actually is your passion.
I think that's a great message.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Thanks for sharing that, Sean and I try to keep
this show as rooted in science as we can. We're
talking about doing that when it comes to your writing,
and we try to keep the show on track for that.
We've gotten to the point where in society in general now,
with discussions about UAPs, all of a sudden Things that
(16:32):
at one time didn't seem like they were real science
and real things that scientists could talk about are now
obviously at times you know front page news or you know,
one of the most trending stories online or whatever. And
as more and more discussions come out about UAPs, it's
probably something because of writing and because of the fact
that you know, you do work in interstellar travel, you
(16:54):
probably have given some thought to what's going on with UAPs.
I was just curious because I know you'll get asked this.
I'm sure you probably get asked it all the time,
and you'll get asked at something like Dragon Con your
thoughts on where we are in our discussions about UAPs
and what's going on.
Speaker 4 (17:10):
Well, as with every storyteller, I've always got a story
when I was pursuing all this info about science and
space as a kid, as a young person, and I
was reading every book I could read on science and space,
and that included books about UFOs because in the mid
seventies there were a lot of people seeing these things,
(17:31):
and in my area of Kentucky there were lots of sightings,
and I actually went and talked to people who claimed
to have seen these things, and I really believe we
were being visited. And then I went to college and
started learning about in astronomy, the distances between the stars,
the energy required to get to the speeds you need
to travel between the stars. And we started learning more
about the planets in our solar system, and it looks
(17:52):
like we're in a big, mostly dead solar system and
we're looking at exoplanets and not many of them look
like they can sustain life. I changed my view and
I said, well, you know, I don't know that we're
really being visited by anybody, but I set up a
trip wire a mental note, and that mental note was,
if ever, the Department of Defense and Military comes out
(18:16):
with multisensor data, i e. It's not just something that
somebody in their back porch looks up and sees a
light in the sky, but there's radar, sonar, infrared simultaneously
with visible of things we can't explain, I would start
paying attention again. Well, dang it, that happened in the
(18:37):
last ten years, right, and now we've had congressional hearings
about it. You've seen the videos on YouTube from the
military aircraft. I've talked to people in unclassified settings about
things that there's multisensor data for that I don't think
we can ignore. Now that said, there's a big leap
(18:59):
between hey, it is this and over being visited by aliens, Right,
So I think there might be many possible explanations for
these UAPs, but you can't rule out the extraterrestrials. It's
just I don't think it's a high probability of that
happening for a lot of reasons. But I am taking
it seriously. And in fact, there's a meeting happening in
(19:21):
Italy this fall from the Soul Foundation called Soul twenty five,
and it's a group founded by a Nobel Prize winner
in medicine and I'm sorry, I can't remember his name
off the top of my head. But it's an invitation
only event and I got invited to go, and so
I'm eager to go and listen and see what they
have to say and what kinds of research they're doing.
(19:42):
I've seen their board. It's a pretty credible group of people,
and I'm not affiliated with them in any way. I'm
not going as a NASA person. I'm going on vacation time,
but I want to go and listen I want to
find out what this is about, because I can no
longer ignore it, I guess is the bottom line.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
We took a similar approach on our show. The nature
of this show, Beate of Stars, is it's a space
news show, so we talk about current affairs in both
space exploration but also in astrophysics and astronomy, and all
of a sudden there were congressional hearings and there were
professional testimonies, and it was like, well, we can't not
(20:20):
talk about it on the show, right, So it just
got to be a very interesting time, which is when
I know that you're involved with the Interstellar Space symposiums,
you know, it's it's it's It was a question that
Wes and I talked about asking you because it's just
it's just such an interesting thing that we live through
a time where it made it to that level and
(20:40):
as you say, naval pilots with multi multi sensor data
on these phenomenon and we can't necessarily just pin it
down to oh, it's just a seagull or something, right,
So so it was a very interesting time. Do you
find that Do you find that when when I can't
say things like this, because it really hasn't happened before,
but when really interesting, forefront pushing ideas in science are
(21:04):
coming forward, that you get a lot of extra interest
from people in the field of going into propulsion technology
or going into just space exploration in general. These it
feels like these kind of societal things almost drive and
interest that ends up producing another wave of scientists.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
I get a lot of emails both at NASA and
my author account because I write books about the plausibility
of traveling to the stars and science fiction novels. I
get about an email a week from someone who is
interested in the field, and might be a sincere question
of a thoughtful person who's looking into it, Hey, have
(21:44):
you thought about this? Or have you thought about that?
I also get people's perpetual energy patentable supposedly ideas sent
to me wanting my opinion, And of course I'm not
going to evaluate all those. I don't know if there's
not enough hours in the day to do that, you
probably get those. I love hearing from people, and I
try to be polite to everyone who reaches out, and
(22:05):
I always respond to people. It may take me a
while because my inbox gets kind of full, but I
think it does I think these things inspire people to
think about things they don't normally think about. And I'm
going to go on a rant, and that rant is
we are so insular, you know. I'm of the TV generation.
My kids are of the internet, you know, social media generation.
(22:26):
They're millennials, and we spend so much time inwardly focused
looking at screens we're in our houses. I just think
that when people actually go outside and they look at
the sky, if they can get to a place that's
a dark sky and you look at the stars, you
can't help but have the deep thoughts of are we alone?
(22:47):
What else is out there? What's my place in all this? Right?
And science fiction helps you when you're back inside kind
of think, Okay, I want to go there, I want
to do what other people are thinking about this. But
I think the sightings in the sky get people look up,
and when they look up, they can't help but ask
some of those more meaningful questions, right, And some of
the people who ask those questions are inspired to go
(23:09):
in science. Some of them might go into theology, you know,
I don't know, but at least they're asking that question
because our ancestors, thousands of years ago that's all they
did at night other than sleep, right, they looked at
the sky. So anyway, that's my rant, get outside, look
up and think about the really meaningful questions.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Well my advice, and you say that, and Shawn and
I always get excited because when there is an event,
when you have an eclipse, when you have Aurora borealis
that make their way down to Puerto Rico, you know,
as far south as that, these kind of and then
happen twice in the same year, which is insane, but
these are the kind of things that do drive people
to go outside and at least look at the sky,
(23:51):
and it does sort of inspire those very things. So
it's one of those Even in Shawn and I will
talk about and when one of the meteor showers happens,
and we don't cover those quite as much, and people ask,
why didn't you tell us there were going to be
meteor showers, And it's like, because that doesn't quite have
the dramatic effect. Often you're just kind of staring at
the sky for a long time and you don't see
(24:12):
a whole lot, and every now and then you see something,
it doesn't quite have that punch as some of the
other things. So any of those things that happened certainly
drive people outside to do exactly what you're saying. They
start looking at the sky.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
The eclipses were huge for that. That's you know, people
walk around with I was in this town for the
eclipse of you know, twenty twenty four or the one
up and a few years ago. I was fortunate I
was asked to go speak at Johnny Cash's boyhood home
in Arkansas, and I'm a big Johnny Cash fan, right,
And then I actually watched the eclipse in a little
(24:43):
town called Pigot, Arkansas, and it was beautiful, clear, guys.
It was like a party. The whole town was out there.
Kids were playing games, they had their glasses, people were
oohing and eyeing and looking at the sky and they
was all right in front. As a writer, was right
in f front of the house where hemming Ray Hemmingway
wrote part of a Farewell to Arms. So for me
(25:06):
it was like double duty. You know, I'm there where
one of the great writers of the twentieth century did
his work. I'm looking up at the sky, I'm seeing
this incredible phenomenon happen, and I'm seeing people around me
get excited about it. It's one of those memories I'll
never forget the emotions that brought out all flowing together.
It was great well, and.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
I think you probably experienced this, either through your own
experience or just being with other people. When someone sees
something like a total solar eclipse for the first time,
it really can be life changing, right. I mean, it
doesn't necessarily make them into a scientist or drive them
into a stem field, but it really changes their perspective
on just how they think about their daily lives, how
(25:47):
they think about our interaction with the universe. And I
got to be in Waco, Texas during the last solar
eclipse and was with a fairly large group of people
down in Waco, and that was my impression. I had
seen solar eclipses before, but I knew how impactful they were,
so I kind of cast my eyes down a little
bit and just shared the experience of watching all these
(26:08):
other people see that event for the first time. And
it kind of really brings about this idea that we
truly are citizens of the solar system.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
And it gives you also a sense of scale in
your place in it, and when you see what you
can't see during the day the corona of the sun,
and there was actually a solar prominence visible right at
this past eclipse, and people were saying, what's that? What's that?
Where are we seeing that? And you know, just to
see them, and they never would ask that in their
(26:39):
daily life, right, but they did. And yeah, you're right.
It was great. And what was also really neat is
when it finally ended, people groaned because they wanted it
to continue, right, They were like, oh, darn is over.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Well, there's another one coming in twenty twenty nine in
the Kimberly resin of Australia and Western Australia. Sean and
I are trying our best to get down for that.
That's right near my wife's birthplace in Australia. So if
you'd like to join us for that, we'll try to
figure out a way we can make that happen.
Speaker 4 (27:13):
That's a long trip. I've been to Australia once and
I loved it. I was there for a space conference,
did some sight seeing, but bore, you got to be
ready for a long flight when you go to Australia.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
I just got back from there, so it's very fresh,
very fresh on my mind. More with Les Johnson after
a quick break.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
So, Les, we want to ask you just this question,
and we don't want to know secrets that you can't
tell us. But certainly there are emergent technology that are
under development at Marshall and at other places. What do
you feel like is the most important emergent technology that's
going to really improve our understanding or our ability to
(28:12):
explore space that people just kind of don't know about.
They don't know what's happening. It's not because it's secret,
but it's it's just the public awareness is not as
high about that.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
That's a question I don't know if I can answer
just off the top of my head. In terms of things,
there are some potential revolutions coming that could make long
duration in the Solar System human spaceflight more achievable. One
of them is in the whole notion of how do
you do closed loop life support to keep people alive
(28:46):
perhaps on a two and a half to three and
a half year round trip mission too and from Mars right,
and the technologies we're using today are very well understood.
They're all evolved from the systems developed back in the sixties.
They're all based on chemistry. One of the initiatives that
I started in my tenure here and this is all
(29:07):
public I'm not giving inside information. Is biological based EQUALISS
and life support environmental closed loop life support system sorry
after an acronym in there. And the notion is you know,
since since we've in the last twenty five years, this
is the sameuctree of bioengineering CRISP or genetic engineering modifying
(29:28):
and understanding the genome. And I think we're on the
cusp of being able to take microbes and have a
bioregenerative system instead of just using chemistry, use the biology
of nature itself augmented through genetic engineering, to recycle air, water,
break apart carbon dioxide, turn it back into oxygen, put
the carbon somewhere where you can use it to do
(29:48):
some kind of printing, three D printing or otherwise. So
I would say there's a potential for a real breakthrough
of life support systems that are essential for people to
travel of the stars to come eventually and in the
Solar system near term for sure. That's one. The other
is I am a huge fan of space nuclear power
(30:10):
and propulsion, and I think nuclear power in space recently
has been making the news. But this notion of using
the energy of the atom to help drive our spacecraft.
I could actually open up a lot more of the
Solar System for human exploration because it's a lot more
energy release and ability to propel a spacecraft than we
can get through chemistry. So I'm all in favor of
(30:33):
those two are examples that people may or may not
be aware of.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Thank you. That's a great answer.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
So you mentioned earlier you're working on a book. Now,
could you tell us a little bit about that, and
then also a little bit about your book that's coming
out in November that's part of the Benbova Outer Planet series.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
Sure, if I can start with the latter, that would
be great. I have been a big ben Bova fan
since I was in high school. I read his books.
He was the editor of the premier science fiction magazine
in the field, Analog Magazine, back in the eighties. He
also edited a short lived magazine that was really high
gloss that I got every issue of called Omni. If
(31:16):
anybody remembers Omni, great science fiction, science fact magazine. And
he also has written some fantastic hard science science fiction books.
His Mars book is like the seminal work on human
exploration at Mars, and when he passed of COVID in
twenty twenty one. I think it was shortly after that
his estate reached out to me and asked me if
(31:38):
I'd be willing to write, based on his notes, the
final book in his Grand Tour series, which spans all
the way out from Mercury to all the planets and
the minor planets, all the way out to Pluto and
concludes the arc of his story. And so of course
I said I'd be honored to do that. So I did,
(31:59):
and the book called Pluto comes out in November in
hardcover from Tour Books. And I'm really excited about that
book because I idolize Ben. But I'm also nervous because
there are a lot of ben Bova fans out there,
and having somebody else write his last book, I might
not meet their expectations, right, So I've got to kind
(32:22):
of gird myself for the real heart diehard ben Bova
fans to write. You know, this is not how Ben
would have ended it. But I hope they don't do that.
I hope they say this is a great and fitting ending.
Because I reread many of his books and I tried
to pay honor to Ben as I was completing that.
Now what I'm working on. I'm working on the third
book with Travis Taylor in our Orion's Arm series, which
(32:43):
is a first contact story. And the first two books
are Saving Proxima and Crisis at Proxima and they're from
Beyon Science Fiction part of Simon and Schuster. They're distributed
that way, and that'll be out sometime next year. And
I'm also working on a nonfiction book for Princeton Universe Press,
which is about how we can use space technology to
(33:04):
help improve life on Earth and to let people know
that space development and exploration is not just about going there,
but it's also about helping us solve problems here on
Earth and making our lives better here on the planet.
So I'm really excited about that book. Princeton Press has
(33:25):
some plans for that book when it's finished, and I'm
really pumped. I'm about two thirds of the way finished
with that book.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Less, we appreciate you taking some time with us today.
Looking forward to seeing a Dragon con, I can tell
that there are already people you're getting ready to connect
with when you get there, so I know you're probably
pretty excited about getting back to the convention.
Speaker 4 (33:48):
Oh, I love Dragon Con. The director of the space
track does a fantastic job pulling things together, and her
name is Rain Glenn, and I feel like we're family
even though we're not, because I've been to so many
of her stuff work on panel ideas back and forth
and so Phillips and the sci fi lit track. I
just give just kudos and shout outs to the people
who take the time to put together a great convention.
(34:10):
So I think any of your listeners that want to
come out, whether they're science oriented or not, that if
they're into pop culture and this kind of stuff, they're
gonna have a great time.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
And I always tell people whatever you think it is,
it's probably that and a whole lot more.
Speaker 4 (34:25):
Oh yeah, oh yeah. I tell people when they ask me,
I say, it's a spectacle. It is.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
And I try to tell people too, like when some
of the guests come in and they're preparing to come
in and they say, well, I hear this one's different
than some of the other conventions, and I say, well,
first thing you need to know, because they'll ask the
question like, so when does it shut down each day?
And it's like it shuts down on Monday.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
Like there's no.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
Nightly shut down. It just it starts on Thursday and
it stops on Monday. That's just the way it works.
And it's all hours of the night. And it's just
like being on you know, a cruise ship where there's
a giant costume party going on and then all these
other cool tracks and things going on at the same time,
and it just really never stops. But nobody parties like
the science track. I know that's a fact less Johnson,
(35:11):
thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 4 (35:13):
Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
How about that, Sean, Wow, was that a great interview
or what? Les?
Speaker 3 (35:19):
Isn't that cool?
Speaker 2 (35:20):
You know, knowing how much he appreciates Dragon con, how
much he enjoys the convention, just being able to kind
of tee him up for that right at the beginning
and hear him talk about that, he kind of knew
we were going to have a talker and that's good
when you do interviews, you want a talker.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
He was a talker, but in a great way, right.
I mean he's a science he's a true science communicator, right,
And yes he's a science fiction author, but he's also
a science communicator. And I think that's it just reinforces
the reason why we do this joint coverage of dragon Con,
because he put it very very well himself when he
(35:58):
talked about the fantas haastic influence that the TV series
Star Trek had on his journey into space. There are
so many people in the age group that apparently Less
and I are pretty close, pretty similar in age, so
many people of our generation who receive their initial inspiration
from that one TV show, right, that one TV show
(36:22):
probably did more to drive people into science and technology
than all manner of recruiting efforts of academic institutions or
you know, science teachers telling their kids in class, you
should really go into science as a career. Probably Star
Trek did orders of magnitude more good in that regard.
So again, that's that's why we that's why we pay
(36:42):
attention to dragon Con, and that's why we at Space
Science Center at Columbus State University support the notion that
we need to know more about science fiction because it
leads to actual science, both in the ideas but then
in the inspiration of people to take part in that.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
And we thank less again for joining us, and Shawn
and I thank you for listening, and we will do
this again next week. Overhead Door Company of Columbus has
all of your garage door needs covered, Residential and commercial
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Overhead Door Company of Columbus has you covered. Plus they've
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Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics,
and space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been
known to learn about astronomical phenomenon, the scientific method, and
expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar asterism and uranus. Listen,
that's your own risk.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Go ahead. When made of Stars, medium Stars, Madies, When
meda stars.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
You could be from high would New Mexicomus.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
We're on.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Stars when we are Made of Stars. I'm Wes Carrol.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
And I'm doctor Sean Cruisin from Columbus State University's Coca
Cola Space.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Science Centerles Johnson is more than just your friendly neighborhood
rocket scientist. He's the chief technologist at NASA's Marshall Space
Flight Center. He's an accomplished author, and he'll be appearing
at dragon Con Labor Day weekend in Atlanta. Most importantly,
he's appearing now on Made of Stars. Les Johnson Welcome.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
Hey, thanks for having me on the show. I'm glad
to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
We're excited to have you on because this is the
time of year when we start talking about events like
dragon Con, and a lot of people they don't have
a great understanding of what this convention is. They think
of the old Shatner sketch with on SNL where he's
calling everybody nerds and telling them to get a life.
Dragon Con is so much bigger than that. It's this
(01:43):
popular arts convention. It's huge, but it has so many
components to it that include actual science. It's not just
science fiction. It's actual science, and they've kind of grown
these science tracks over the years, and that's part of
why you're there. You're also there for the science fiction
side of it. I'm sure with the books that you've written,
(02:04):
but this isn't your first time at dragon Con. I
know you've been there before. So if you could talk
just a little bit about your experiences at dragon Con.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
Sure, I'll be glad to do that. The first thing
I have to do is make it clear that anything
I say is my own opinion, not that of my employer,
because I go to dragon Con and write books on
my own time, and I'm not representing NASA when I
do that. Now that I've got the disclaimer aside, I
love dragon Con. I've actually been going since the mid nineties.
If you can believe that, I took a break when
(02:36):
my kids were little. There were some things there that
were not suitable for children at times, especially late at
night on Saturday, and so I didn't go when they
were young. But I've been going back for the last
decade or so and just love it. Me and seventy
thousand of my good friends. Right, it's a real spectacle.
I typically participate in the space track. I've been in
the science track this year. I'll be also in the
(02:57):
Apocalypse Rising track, which is to be a trip, the
writer's track, and you meet some of the great people,
and the costumes are awesome. It's basically one big festival
the whole weekend. But the thing that I don't think
listeners who might hear about Dragon con appreciate unless you
actually go, is it's just just not about people in costume.
(03:20):
You have some of the most meaningful conversations you're going
to have all year long with experts in many fields
talking about the future and the impact of technology on
the future, where the society's going, foreign events. I mean,
it's incredible as well as all the nerdy stuff. I mean,
it all kind of rolls together.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
And you being there as a writer. It's just one
of those situations where You're really kind of catching it
from two different sides, aren't.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
You catching it? It's probably a good term for part
of it, because you know, the writer. If you ever
make a mistake or say something in a book or
there's a misspelling, you hear about it from your readers,
and I'll hear about it at Dragon Con. But no,
I love that because I kind of live in both
those worlds. I've been a science fiction fan long before
I became a science fiction and writer. I was a
science fiction fan before I became a physicist, and for me,
(04:10):
it all merges, and the persona that I have and
who I am is a mixture of all of that. Writer,
science fiction reader, science fiction movie fan, as well as scientist.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Is there extra pressure as a scientist with your daytime job,
your day job that makes it so that you feel
like you have extra pressure to keep your science fiction
as grounded as possible in that real science.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
Well, I do not, completely though. When I'm writing some
of my hard science science fiction works, like the trilogy
I'm currently working on with Travis Taylor, my co author
of the Orion's Arm series, we want to keep a
really good story being told, but we make sure that
all the technology and the science in the background is plausible,
not necessarily what we can do today in engineering, but
(04:59):
something that's not physically impossible. Because we're marketing the books
as hard science, which means it's got to be believable,
and if we put something in there that's dubious, we'll
definitely hear about it, and that's bad. I don't want
to hear stuff like that. I want people to say,
can we really do that? And then that turns on
the teacher in me that likes to go in and explain, well,
(05:20):
as a matter of fact, we might be able to
do that, And that's the beauty of science fiction, is
the what if and such. But I also write. I
wrote a space opera book, and that's kind of a
subgenre of science fiction where the science isn't as important
as the grand sweeping story of an interstellar empire kind
of thing thing. So it just depends on what I'm writing.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
You and I share. I think we share some passions, certainly,
but we also share kind of an endeavor where we're
getting other people interested in science, and I think that
we know that there's a nexus point between science and
science fiction that those people who enjoy science fiction. Also
enjoy pursuing the hard science end of things. And really
(06:02):
science fiction has inspired so many people to go into
various careers in science. And I think you have some
background yourself and that can you talk about those years
and what inspired you to actually become a science technologist
at NASA?
Speaker 4 (06:19):
I sure can. It's a good question, Thanks for asking.
It goes way back. I was a young child when
Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. This gives away my age.
I was seven years old watching on a black and white,
grainy television. You know, when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.
My parents probably woke me up. I was in my
footy pajamas. There's something who knows? And I got excited
(06:39):
about it and started kind of paying attention to what
was happening in the space race at the time. And
then when I was about twelve, that's when it happened.
My sisters let me stay up late with them on
a Friday night, probably till ten o'clock to watch reruns
of Star Trek O MG. I was hooked. I decided
I want to build the Enterprise, so I started reading
(07:04):
every science fiction book I could get at the school.
Anything my parents would buy me at the bookstore and
started reading popular science books. Isaac Asimov was a big
inspiration with both his popular science and science fiction books,
and it was all from there I decided I wanted
to be a physicist. I wanted to work for NASA,
and I wanted to help make basically the enterprise of reality.
(07:28):
So that has been I've been driven with that passion
since I was middle school. And you go back to
my reunions, and I'll be going to one this fall
in my hometown up in Ashland, Kentucky, and none of
the people there were surprised that I ended up with
the job that I had. Many of them would tell you,
I knew that when you were in sixth grade, you know,
(07:51):
not just my inspiration.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Just a quick follow up question to that, do you
this is kind of taking onto something you said a
moment ago where you get a lot of fear feed
back from your readers if they think that something isn't
quite right. Do you think that reading and really immersing
yourself in science fiction helps develop your critical thinking skills,
something that is so important for science students as they go.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
Forward, critical thinking skills. I think for some it can
some people it's just escape its literature, right, they just
want to read it and they want to escape and
enjoy the ride. But I think there are a lot
of people like I was that when I read science
fiction and encountering an intriguing idea, you glom onto it.
(08:34):
And I can give a professional example. I've been the
lead here at NASA Marshall for many years now in
our work to develop and fly something called a solar sale,
a type of propulsion system that uses a large, lightweight
thin reflector looks like a piece of aluminum foil and
in space photons light from the Sun reflect from that,
(08:54):
and as they reflect from it, it's like little bb
shooting at a canvas. Right. They impart a little bit
of momentum intal move so it's a propulsion system. Well,
I remember reading a story when I was in high
school by two of the great science fiction writer collaborators,
Larry Niven and Jerry Pornell, and the book was called
The Mote Mote in God's Eye. It was about an
(09:16):
alien invasion of Earth and the aliens were coming driven
on these big sales, driven by laser light that allowed
them to get really high speeds for interstellar travel. I
thought that was so cool. Well, in my career in
the early two thousands, I had the opportunity to start
working on solar sales and so I granted it and
(09:38):
I said, I want to do that. And the reason
I wanted to do it was because I think, ultimately
that might be how we go to the stars. And
I was inspired to do that by reading the works
of Nivin and Pornell. So it really fed directly into
my career, and it was something I read in high school.
Of course, I read other books about it since then
and found out they're physically possible, but the technology is
(10:01):
now possible to build our fort sales. They won't go
to the stars, but their descendants might, so it's exciting.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
More with Les Johnson after a quick break. Do you
(10:34):
ever have moments where you're at a place like Dragon
Con and you're talking to two fans that are actually,
you know, interested in pursuing science as a career and
get this thought or feedback that your writing may be
influencing that next scientist, the way that the writing that
you read influenced you.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
Well, I don't I don't want to sound braggardly, but
there have been cases where I've had people come who
are in the field who told me that some of
my books influenced that. There was an entrepreneur who came
to Huntsville, Gosh, by the way, which is great. Rocket
City is a great, great place to be if your
(11:13):
listeners haven't visited Huntsville. We've got a great space museum.
It's a wonderful place to be. And we were having
lunch and he was proposing a payload for the International
Space Station, and I was not the deciding official. He
had already met with all the people about that work,
and he just contacted me saying he'd read some of
my stuff and he'd like to talk. And he took
(11:34):
out a copy of a book I had written a
few years before that and said, hey, let's I want
you to know and I want your signature on this
book because this book inspired me to write the proposal
as being considered for Space Station. That payload actually went
up to Space Station. So I had a direct encounter
that was really memorable for me, and that I think
that was the first time someone had directly attributed their
(11:58):
career direction and something that were working on to something
I had written. And that's where I realized I better
be careful what I say because people are going to
listen to me.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Well, and it's just semantics, I know, but technically you're
not bragging. If I asked the question so I was,
you know that way, it's technically you're not bragging.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
Okay, I'll take that.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
So as you're thinking through that inspiration, and you know,
I think that's a great story, by the way, I
just I just love to hear that as you're thinking
through that inspiration and knowing that there are a number
of our students here at Columbus State University who've listened
to this podcast, and also just other students you might
be talking to out there, students who might be flirting
(12:40):
with the idea of pursuing a career that might lead
them to working either with NASA or at NASA directly,
what kind of advice or what kind of helpful hints
do you have for them in terms of like pursuing
that career and what kinds of things do they need
to be thinking about along that journey.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
The number one thing I hear from people, by far,
it may not be the majority, but it's certainly a
plurality of comments along those lines is I would love
to have pursued a career in science, but I couldn't
do the math. And I hear that a lot, and
that makes me very sad because I have a personal
(13:20):
story that it relates to that I wanted to be
a physicist. As I said, I've wanted to do that
since I was twelve. When I went to college and
I took in first semester freshman year CALC one. I
barely got to see, and I think I got to
see because the professor took pity on me because he
knew I was so motivated and I was terrified because
(13:43):
I had placed all of my dreams in doing that career,
and I knew I had to understand calculus. And so
for the second semester, my faculty advisor happened to be
in the math department and he said, less, I'm teaching
CALC two next semester. I'll set up a weekly tutoring
session with you, and as I teach a little different
(14:05):
style than the profit you had for calkwe and I
will be honest with you. Don't give up your career
goals yet, don't change your major. Let's see how this
works out. And his name is doctor Charles Haggard, and
he recently passed, and this was at Transylvania University up
in Kentucky, small liberal arts college, and he met with
me every week to tutor me, and about halfway through
(14:27):
the semester, I got it, and I ended up going
on and taking all the calculus, differential equations, partial different
all the stuff you got to do to become a physicist.
But I was almost giving up because the math I
did not understand at first, and had to work really
really hard at it and get help every single week,
(14:51):
until finally finally my brain clicked and was like, oh,
I get it, and I was able to start figuring
out how to do it. And so the advice I
give to young people is if you get intimidated by math,
you may not be able to do it, but you
may not have had the right instructor or the right teacher,
or you might need a little bit of help. Don't
(15:12):
be afraid to ask for it, because if that's your dream,
don't let that stand in a way.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
I think that's such an important advice, and it's kind
of heartwarming to hear you tell that story, because myself
and I have other colleagues that I've heard from We
had a similar journey. I decided on physics a little
bit later in life. I was already in my twenties,
and then I decided, well, wait a minute, I was
in a different major track, and I really wanted to
pursue physics, but like you, I didn't have I didn't
(15:40):
have that solid foundation in mathematics, and so I had
to begin at a very low level and kind of
fight my way up through math. And so I do
actually share that same message with my students, but it's
fantastic to hear a person in your position share that
same message, which is, hey, you can do this. You
may have to find the right now, you may have
to work extra hours, you have to put that extra
(16:04):
effort into it, but it is achievable, and don't let
that stop you from pursuing what actually is your passion.
I think that's a great message.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Thanks for sharing that, Sean and I try to keep
this show as rooted in science as we can. We're
talking about doing that when it comes to your writing,
and we try to keep the show on track for that.
We've gotten to the point where in society in general now,
with discussions about UAPs, all of a sudden Things that
(16:32):
at one time didn't seem like they were real science
and real things that scientists could talk about are now
obviously at times you know front page news or you know,
one of the most trending stories online or whatever. And
as more and more discussions come out about UAPs, it's
probably something because of writing and because of the fact
that you know, you do work in interstellar travel, you
(16:54):
probably have given some thought to what's going on with UAPs.
I was just curious because I know you'll get asked this.
I'm sure you probably get asked it all the time,
and you'll get asked at something like Dragon Con your
thoughts on where we are in our discussions about UAPs
and what's going on.
Speaker 4 (17:10):
Well, as with every storyteller, I've always got a story
when I was pursuing all this info about science and
space as a kid, as a young person, and I
was reading every book I could read on science and space,
and that included books about UFOs because in the mid
seventies there were a lot of people seeing these things,
(17:31):
and in my area of Kentucky there were lots of sightings,
and I actually went and talked to people who claimed
to have seen these things, and I really believe we
were being visited. And then I went to college and
started learning about in astronomy, the distances between the stars,
the energy required to get to the speeds you need
to travel between the stars. And we started learning more
about the planets in our solar system, and it looks
(17:52):
like we're in a big, mostly dead solar system and
we're looking at exoplanets and not many of them look
like they can sustain life. I changed my view and
I said, well, you know, I don't know that we're
really being visited by anybody, but I set up a
trip wire a mental note, and that mental note was,
if ever, the Department of Defense and Military comes out
(18:16):
with multisensor data, i e. It's not just something that
somebody in their back porch looks up and sees a
light in the sky, but there's radar, sonar, infrared simultaneously
with visible of things we can't explain, I would start
paying attention again. Well, dang it, that happened in the
(18:37):
last ten years, right, and now we've had congressional hearings
about it. You've seen the videos on YouTube from the
military aircraft. I've talked to people in unclassified settings about
things that there's multisensor data for that I don't think
we can ignore. Now that said, there's a big leap
(18:59):
between hey, it is this and over being visited by aliens, Right,
So I think there might be many possible explanations for
these UAPs, but you can't rule out the extraterrestrials. It's
just I don't think it's a high probability of that
happening for a lot of reasons. But I am taking
it seriously. And in fact, there's a meeting happening in
(19:21):
Italy this fall from the Soul Foundation called Soul twenty five,
and it's a group founded by a Nobel Prize winner
in medicine and I'm sorry, I can't remember his name
off the top of my head. But it's an invitation
only event and I got invited to go, and so
I'm eager to go and listen and see what they
have to say and what kinds of research they're doing.
(19:42):
I've seen their board. It's a pretty credible group of people,
and I'm not affiliated with them in any way. I'm
not going as a NASA person. I'm going on vacation time,
but I want to go and listen I want to
find out what this is about, because I can no
longer ignore it, I guess is the bottom line.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
We took a similar approach on our show. The nature
of this show, Beate of Stars, is it's a space
news show, so we talk about current affairs in both
space exploration but also in astrophysics and astronomy, and all
of a sudden there were congressional hearings and there were
professional testimonies, and it was like, well, we can't not
(20:20):
talk about it on the show, right, So it just
got to be a very interesting time, which is when
I know that you're involved with the Interstellar Space symposiums,
you know, it's it's it's It was a question that
Wes and I talked about asking you because it's just
it's just such an interesting thing that we live through
a time where it made it to that level and
(20:40):
as you say, naval pilots with multi multi sensor data
on these phenomenon and we can't necessarily just pin it
down to oh, it's just a seagull or something, right,
So so it was a very interesting time. Do you
find that Do you find that when when I can't
say things like this, because it really hasn't happened before,
but when really interesting, forefront pushing ideas in science are
(21:04):
coming forward, that you get a lot of extra interest
from people in the field of going into propulsion technology
or going into just space exploration in general. These it
feels like these kind of societal things almost drive and
interest that ends up producing another wave of scientists.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
I get a lot of emails both at NASA and
my author account because I write books about the plausibility
of traveling to the stars and science fiction novels. I
get about an email a week from someone who is
interested in the field, and might be a sincere question
of a thoughtful person who's looking into it, Hey, have
(21:44):
you thought about this? Or have you thought about that?
I also get people's perpetual energy patentable supposedly ideas sent
to me wanting my opinion, And of course I'm not
going to evaluate all those. I don't know if there's
not enough hours in the day to do that, you
probably get those. I love hearing from people, and I
try to be polite to everyone who reaches out, and
(22:05):
I always respond to people. It may take me a
while because my inbox gets kind of full, but I
think it does I think these things inspire people to
think about things they don't normally think about. And I'm
going to go on a rant, and that rant is
we are so insular, you know. I'm of the TV generation.
My kids are of the internet, you know, social media generation.
(22:26):
They're millennials, and we spend so much time inwardly focused
looking at screens we're in our houses. I just think
that when people actually go outside and they look at
the sky, if they can get to a place that's
a dark sky and you look at the stars, you
can't help but have the deep thoughts of are we alone?
(22:47):
What else is out there? What's my place in all this? Right?
And science fiction helps you when you're back inside kind
of think, Okay, I want to go there, I want
to do what other people are thinking about this. But
I think the sightings in the sky get people look up,
and when they look up, they can't help but ask
some of those more meaningful questions, right, And some of
the people who ask those questions are inspired to go
(23:09):
in science. Some of them might go into theology, you know,
I don't know, but at least they're asking that question
because our ancestors, thousands of years ago that's all they
did at night other than sleep, right, they looked at
the sky. So anyway, that's my rant, get outside, look
up and think about the really meaningful questions.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Well my advice, and you say that, and Shawn and
I always get excited because when there is an event,
when you have an eclipse, when you have Aurora borealis
that make their way down to Puerto Rico, you know,
as far south as that, these kind of and then
happen twice in the same year, which is insane, but
these are the kind of things that do drive people
to go outside and at least look at the sky,
(23:51):
and it does sort of inspire those very things. So
it's one of those Even in Shawn and I will
talk about and when one of the meteor showers happens,
and we don't cover those quite as much, and people ask,
why didn't you tell us there were going to be
meteor showers, And it's like, because that doesn't quite have
the dramatic effect. Often you're just kind of staring at
the sky for a long time and you don't see
(24:12):
a whole lot, and every now and then you see something,
it doesn't quite have that punch as some of the
other things. So any of those things that happened certainly
drive people outside to do exactly what you're saying. They
start looking at the sky.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
The eclipses were huge for that. That's you know, people
walk around with I was in this town for the
eclipse of you know, twenty twenty four or the one
up and a few years ago. I was fortunate I
was asked to go speak at Johnny Cash's boyhood home
in Arkansas, and I'm a big Johnny Cash fan, right,
And then I actually watched the eclipse in a little
(24:43):
town called Pigot, Arkansas, and it was beautiful, clear, guys.
It was like a party. The whole town was out there.
Kids were playing games, they had their glasses, people were
oohing and eyeing and looking at the sky and they
was all right in front. As a writer, was right
in f front of the house where hemming Ray Hemmingway
wrote part of a Farewell to Arms. So for me
(25:06):
it was like double duty. You know, I'm there where
one of the great writers of the twentieth century did
his work. I'm looking up at the sky, I'm seeing
this incredible phenomenon happen, and I'm seeing people around me
get excited about it. It's one of those memories I'll
never forget the emotions that brought out all flowing together.
It was great well, and.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
I think you probably experienced this, either through your own
experience or just being with other people. When someone sees
something like a total solar eclipse for the first time,
it really can be life changing, right. I mean, it
doesn't necessarily make them into a scientist or drive them
into a stem field, but it really changes their perspective
on just how they think about their daily lives, how
(25:47):
they think about our interaction with the universe. And I
got to be in Waco, Texas during the last solar
eclipse and was with a fairly large group of people
down in Waco, and that was my impression. I had
seen solar eclipses before, but I knew how impactful they were,
so I kind of cast my eyes down a little
bit and just shared the experience of watching all these
(26:08):
other people see that event for the first time. And
it kind of really brings about this idea that we
truly are citizens of the solar system.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
And it gives you also a sense of scale in
your place in it, and when you see what you
can't see during the day the corona of the sun,
and there was actually a solar prominence visible right at
this past eclipse, and people were saying, what's that? What's that?
Where are we seeing that? And you know, just to
see them, and they never would ask that in their
(26:39):
daily life, right, but they did. And yeah, you're right.
It was great. And what was also really neat is
when it finally ended, people groaned because they wanted it
to continue, right, They were like, oh, darn is over.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Well, there's another one coming in twenty twenty nine in
the Kimberly resin of Australia and Western Australia. Sean and
I are trying our best to get down for that.
That's right near my wife's birthplace in Australia. So if
you'd like to join us for that, we'll try to
figure out a way we can make that happen.
Speaker 4 (27:13):
That's a long trip. I've been to Australia once and
I loved it. I was there for a space conference,
did some sight seeing, but bore, you got to be
ready for a long flight when you go to Australia.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
I just got back from there, so it's very fresh,
very fresh on my mind. More with Les Johnson after
a quick break.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
So, Les, we want to ask you just this question,
and we don't want to know secrets that you can't
tell us. But certainly there are emergent technology that are
under development at Marshall and at other places. What do
you feel like is the most important emergent technology that's
going to really improve our understanding or our ability to
(28:12):
explore space that people just kind of don't know about.
They don't know what's happening. It's not because it's secret,
but it's it's just the public awareness is not as
high about that.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
That's a question I don't know if I can answer
just off the top of my head. In terms of things,
there are some potential revolutions coming that could make long
duration in the Solar System human spaceflight more achievable. One
of them is in the whole notion of how do
you do closed loop life support to keep people alive
(28:46):
perhaps on a two and a half to three and
a half year round trip mission too and from Mars right,
and the technologies we're using today are very well understood.
They're all evolved from the systems developed back in the sixties.
They're all based on chemistry. One of the initiatives that
I started in my tenure here and this is all
(29:07):
public I'm not giving inside information. Is biological based EQUALISS
and life support environmental closed loop life support system sorry
after an acronym in there. And the notion is you know,
since since we've in the last twenty five years, this
is the sameuctree of bioengineering CRISP or genetic engineering modifying
(29:28):
and understanding the genome. And I think we're on the
cusp of being able to take microbes and have a
bioregenerative system instead of just using chemistry, use the biology
of nature itself augmented through genetic engineering, to recycle air, water,
break apart carbon dioxide, turn it back into oxygen, put
the carbon somewhere where you can use it to do
(29:48):
some kind of printing, three D printing or otherwise. So
I would say there's a potential for a real breakthrough
of life support systems that are essential for people to
travel of the stars to come eventually and in the
Solar system near term for sure. That's one. The other
is I am a huge fan of space nuclear power
(30:10):
and propulsion, and I think nuclear power in space recently
has been making the news. But this notion of using
the energy of the atom to help drive our spacecraft.
I could actually open up a lot more of the
Solar System for human exploration because it's a lot more
energy release and ability to propel a spacecraft than we
can get through chemistry. So I'm all in favor of
(30:33):
those two are examples that people may or may not
be aware of.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Thank you. That's a great answer.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
So you mentioned earlier you're working on a book. Now,
could you tell us a little bit about that, and
then also a little bit about your book that's coming
out in November that's part of the Benbova Outer Planet series.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
Sure, if I can start with the latter, that would
be great. I have been a big ben Bova fan
since I was in high school. I read his books.
He was the editor of the premier science fiction magazine
in the field, Analog Magazine, back in the eighties. He
also edited a short lived magazine that was really high
gloss that I got every issue of called Omni. If
(31:16):
anybody remembers Omni, great science fiction, science fact magazine. And
he also has written some fantastic hard science science fiction books.
His Mars book is like the seminal work on human
exploration at Mars, and when he passed of COVID in
twenty twenty one. I think it was shortly after that
his estate reached out to me and asked me if
(31:38):
I'd be willing to write, based on his notes, the
final book in his Grand Tour series, which spans all
the way out from Mercury to all the planets and
the minor planets, all the way out to Pluto and
concludes the arc of his story. And so of course
I said I'd be honored to do that. So I did,
(31:59):
and the book called Pluto comes out in November in
hardcover from Tour Books. And I'm really excited about that
book because I idolize Ben. But I'm also nervous because
there are a lot of ben Bova fans out there,
and having somebody else write his last book, I might
not meet their expectations, right, So I've got to kind
(32:22):
of gird myself for the real heart diehard ben Bova
fans to write. You know, this is not how Ben
would have ended it. But I hope they don't do that.
I hope they say this is a great and fitting ending.
Because I reread many of his books and I tried
to pay honor to Ben as I was completing that.
Now what I'm working on. I'm working on the third
book with Travis Taylor in our Orion's Arm series, which
(32:43):
is a first contact story. And the first two books
are Saving Proxima and Crisis at Proxima and they're from
Beyon Science Fiction part of Simon and Schuster. They're distributed
that way, and that'll be out sometime next year. And
I'm also working on a nonfiction book for Princeton Universe Press,
which is about how we can use space technology to
(33:04):
help improve life on Earth and to let people know
that space development and exploration is not just about going there,
but it's also about helping us solve problems here on
Earth and making our lives better here on the planet.
So I'm really excited about that book. Princeton Press has
(33:25):
some plans for that book when it's finished, and I'm
really pumped. I'm about two thirds of the way finished
with that book.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Less, we appreciate you taking some time with us today.
Looking forward to seeing a Dragon con, I can tell
that there are already people you're getting ready to connect
with when you get there, so I know you're probably
pretty excited about getting back to the convention.
Speaker 4 (33:48):
Oh, I love Dragon Con. The director of the space
track does a fantastic job pulling things together, and her
name is Rain Glenn, and I feel like we're family
even though we're not, because I've been to so many
of her stuff work on panel ideas back and forth
and so Phillips and the sci fi lit track. I
just give just kudos and shout outs to the people
who take the time to put together a great convention.
(34:10):
So I think any of your listeners that want to
come out, whether they're science oriented or not, that if
they're into pop culture and this kind of stuff, they're
gonna have a great time.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
And I always tell people whatever you think it is,
it's probably that and a whole lot more.
Speaker 4 (34:25):
Oh yeah, oh yeah. I tell people when they ask me,
I say, it's a spectacle. It is.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
And I try to tell people too, like when some
of the guests come in and they're preparing to come
in and they say, well, I hear this one's different
than some of the other conventions, and I say, well,
first thing you need to know, because they'll ask the
question like, so when does it shut down each day?
And it's like it shuts down on Monday.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
Like there's no.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
Nightly shut down. It just it starts on Thursday and
it stops on Monday. That's just the way it works.
And it's all hours of the night. And it's just
like being on you know, a cruise ship where there's
a giant costume party going on and then all these
other cool tracks and things going on at the same time,
and it just really never stops. But nobody parties like
the science track. I know that's a fact less Johnson,
(35:11):
thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 4 (35:13):
Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
How about that, Sean, Wow, was that a great interview
or what? Les?
Speaker 3 (35:19):
Isn't that cool?
Speaker 2 (35:20):
You know, knowing how much he appreciates Dragon con, how
much he enjoys the convention, just being able to kind
of tee him up for that right at the beginning
and hear him talk about that, he kind of knew
we were going to have a talker and that's good
when you do interviews, you want a talker.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
He was a talker, but in a great way, right.
I mean he's a science he's a true science communicator, right,
And yes he's a science fiction author, but he's also
a science communicator. And I think that's it just reinforces
the reason why we do this joint coverage of dragon Con,
because he put it very very well himself when he
(35:58):
talked about the fantas haastic influence that the TV series
Star Trek had on his journey into space. There are
so many people in the age group that apparently Less
and I are pretty close, pretty similar in age, so
many people of our generation who receive their initial inspiration
from that one TV show, right, that one TV show
(36:22):
probably did more to drive people into science and technology
than all manner of recruiting efforts of academic institutions or
you know, science teachers telling their kids in class, you
should really go into science as a career. Probably Star
Trek did orders of magnitude more good in that regard.
So again, that's that's why we that's why we pay
(36:42):
attention to dragon Con, and that's why we at Space
Science Center at Columbus State University support the notion that
we need to know more about science fiction because it
leads to actual science, both in the ideas but then
in the inspiration of people to take part in that.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
And we thank less again for joining us, and Shawn
and I thank you for listening, and we will do
this again next week. Overhead Door Company of Columbus has
all of your garage door needs covered, Residential and commercial
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