JIM GAFFIGAN & SARAH SILVERMAN: StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson - Curiosity Mars Rover

Jim Gaffigan Sarah Silverman Eugene Mirman our comedic panel and I've got with me my friend and colleague David Grinspoon Dave thanks for coming coming up for this oh thanks for having me this is a blast yeah yeah I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson agreed so David it was page one story an SUV sized Rover was plunked down on Mars like what's up with that what we're really glad it made it we yeah I was scared I said this this is not gonna work yeah because you go nine months and then it wasn't just the airbags like the old ones did right I could that was scary but I I got accustomed to the airbag landing this one it had like like heat shields and then a hypersonic drogue chute and then retro rockets and then a hoist crane it was some Goldberg would have designed and I'm thinking I don't want Google Burt on Mars so yeah with his okay videos yeah I just say what you mean no Jules on Mars yeah let's make that t-shirt I would wear why does it have to be an SUV I mean I wish they would do something a little better for the environment well the lack of the last one was a mini-cooper electric Bissell well last one was solar this one's got news yeah those oside huh you tell me about this one so first of all Edward how confident were you you're an expert on this stuff how confident were you that this whole sequence of landing devices would work I wasn't confident at all I was bricks the thing is the thing is I'm on the science side of this thing so we've got our instruments we want to get them onto the surface of Mars and go to interesting places so we can learn things and the engineering side of it those guys tell us don't worry this will work and then we say so how are you gonna do it and they describe this thing you know it's gonna come in at hypersonic velocity and make these s turns and then drop up the heat shield and there's a parachute and it's gonna fire these rockets and then it's gonna stop 50 metres up and hover and drop things down on this I'm swinging alright at least and we're like you gotta be kidding me that's not gonna work and um it was scary we were scared I was not confident at all and this sounds literally more complicated than making avatar just to put it in perspective and even and even more expensive if you can believe that barely Wow so would you say like twice the cost of Avatar actually it was about 10 times the cost of avatar now but it you tell me I swear if it's worth 10 times as much as avatar I'm going to say yes I think we should measure everything in terms of the cost of appetizer yeah yeah this drink is just like a fifth avatar we can't wait when we call that the AU the Avatar unit all right so so you got so this they should be there month oh sorry I got it I tagged a bit too late it's like Thanksgiving Tara yeah I don't want to interrupt their money should be called I see yous cuz it's like I see hey no no Sarah she's gonna kill herself clap let the radio audience know that Sarah just dropped your microphone yeah so so it landed on the Mars place back to where we were but did you know that I had a private Twitter conversation with the rubber just before it landed and and believe I don't think it over excuse me I had a relationship meaning you tweeted the rover and the rover was like hi Neil come over tweet you know what it was probably just some old guy pretending to be the loser it was like can't can't talk now can't talk now I'm about to go through seven minutes of Terror these six rockets that was Larry here in Durango all about that so no so in there I had to because you were mentioning this tension between the scientists and engineers one of my last two questions was who do you like better scientists or engineers you asked the rubber this nice this of the rover oh and and what did she say yes is she it's a she actually sure it is scientists have to build a lady and send it to Mars that's how they fall in love so it's there in the Twitter history you'll see it she said she would not pick between the two that they are both important for she loves us both she loves his book yes so it worked it landed nothing went wrong almost nothing went wrong what went wrong well Pella crafter crashed into the wall no it actually was it was fortunes it was it was remark to worry about getting laughs Peter was remarkably free remarkably free of goods glitches there was a lot I did my very last question to to curiosity which is her name was that's a G stripper name she sounds very curious your favorite curiosity yeah I said you type to her you did I have an eight-year-old son named Josh she's my world party but you're at a bar and happy hours do I see this I see crawls out from under a rock climbs on your back and ride you like a rodeo bull she said that was not in my briefings that was the answer thank you sir well it's funny we wouldn't actually know if there was life on Mars if it was just hiding out behind the camera right there on top of the rover it would have to be completely moving behind the cameras so there might be a practical joker Martian riding around could be yes adorable yeah so you got AI last counters like 10 experiments on this thing ten what's your what's your favorite about me well I have a little bit partial because I'm part of one of the instrument teams I helped propose and design and so by partially no ties I'm bias okay so so so is that which one and it's not the one I mean obviously the obvious thing to say is the cameras cuz the cameras are so cool cuz we all want to see and it's beautiful and it's amazing and you know it's it's part of its just sightseeing but but our instrument is called rad and it is rad is that it's the radiation assessment detector and we are measuring for the first time red much it is what it stands I invented that 10 years ago sorry yeah now we're measuring how much how much radiation is on the surface of Mars which has never been measured before and is one of the things that would possibly kill you and possibly kill Martian bugs so we want to characterize it and see what it's doing in the soil and in the atmosphere and so so that's not measuring anything about Mars itself it's just stuff that's coming to ours well but it's doing stuff to Mars would you say Martian bugs all right oh you don't know about that is it why not say there aren't Martian bugs I'm just saying are there martian bugs well and then also are they attacking us well so that that that was a slip there are no Martian bugs no they're like microscopic life of some kind well that's what we're trying to figure out um and what this but the rad detector would tell you whether that radiation flux would sterilize the surface until all bugs exactly it's probably if there's bugs microbes whatever on Mars they're underground because on the surface there's no water there's altra violet it's freezing it's it's you know it's it's an ass camera but underground there might be water it's a little more reasonable temperature and you're shielded from the radiation but what we're trying to figure out is how deep do you have to be if you're a Martian bug what's happening to the radiation and the thing to do is to measure it at the surface and then Yosef is very heavy on the surface you gotta go a little deeper to get the bumps again did you guys already a bug do you know what this is really awkward I just realized now that we weren't talking about the Mars candy bar I'll send the memo earlier next time you already figured out the radiation do you have the answer then you're just not telling us is your big jerk eventually yes we have we have data but we haven't released it yet but it's not just cuz we're jerks it's cuz we're trying to figure out if it's if it's right and there's some tricky things like there's there is this we mentioned this nuclear power source that puts out about of radiation so we have to make sure we're not just measuring that well I so you have a nuclear power plant on the rover it's not a power plant it's a power source mmm you know my favorite moment in any day is when Neil is wrong about something scientific it's just literally a joy to see his mustache get angry okay no work we're touchy about this cuz when you use the nuclear word you know people get sometimes upset I wouldn't have any idea watch one of you one of the two verboten Edwards that's right that's right so so so so when we use that N word we try to speak carefully and it's not like a nuclear power plant with the cooling towers and the turbines and all that it's a bunch of plutonium that's giving off heat and we use that to generate electricity to call it to not spook people we just launched yeah yeah we call it they they're not not scary big power thing oh it's it's one of those good safe nuclear power plants clean power source yeah yeah but you wouldn't put it in the drinking water of humans well but Martians would their idiot why do you need new still other at Landers have nukes I don't think so no well the thing is this Lander has more than 10 times as much scientific instrumentation than anything we've sent with these more power needs more power as as Kirk would say to Scotty I need more power and that Andy can run at night it can run in any season and it should be able on one's head solar panels they can only run in the daytime oh I didn't know so this could work in the fall well oh wait you have solar panels don't couldn't you charge a battery and keep working at night you to some degree you can but uh in the Martian winter the amount of power goes down if your solar panels gets covered with dust so Marshall starts very low in the sky yeah and and in fact you we've almost one of them did die because of the winter because it's got two Rovers yeah if if the power goes down enough so that you can't run the heaters at night then you die that already happened one of our previous Rovers so if you want to do a lot of science you want a lot of power a lot of instrumentation you want to last a long time and be able to Rove anywhere on Mars and nukes exactly that's what exactly we have yeah okay just just so we understand yes now here's a one of the experiments I happen to like the name of the Alpha proton x-ray spectrometer man I think you gotta love the sound of that that sounds like something you know in Batman's utility belt yeah you know it doesn't it sound like something to get you pregnant it sounds like 70s version of the future speed yes yeah alpha not the Alpha proton x-ray spectrometer why yes Batman yeah so uh so what does that do for us with an alpha proton x-ray spectrometer you must get so me up oh my god last night Eugene told me not to swear and then I was joking and I was like in icing oh so much pudding and then I clearly got in dear now you get a lot of pudding because you can go up to any rock and go hey babe you've zap you zap it with x-rays and you look at the pattern of what comes back and it tells you what the minerals are made out of what's in that rock how much iron is it's a way of basically probing the rocks not to get to decide of it with you yeah this sounds like it's a way of probing rocks for the mineral aside though wait we want to know what the rocks are made out of coz we want to know what what the story is to have sex with the history of that place well that's a way to break the ice yeah yeah okay uh so nothing all right so let me ask you something so I'm just looking at this how many cameras the thing has and how many it and it landed we're on Mars cuz a lot of places to go so you pick you pre picked a spot yeah we landed in a place called Gale Crater I've been there it's nice for a lot nice I actually named it after a friend of mine Gail Gail ha it's not funny she's dead killed by a Martian I might add yeah yeah it's by far the coolest place we've ever landed on Mars because mr. universe has been there up in some cooler places I so backpack me up here it's a cool place right because it's it's an ancient crater that used to be a lake and has all these sediments in it that tell us about the ancient past on Mars and it's got a 5 kilometer that's 3 miles for you Americans 3 mile high mountain in the middle of it that we're gonna climb up and it's like going up the Grand Canyon on Mars every layer is from a different time in Martian history it's going to tell us the whole story so it's not just a mountain that lifted up surface material it's a it's it has laid bare its layers well looks that way they looked that way from orbit and now we're seeing it you know in the distance as we start to approach it and it's like Utah's just all these layers and canyons and juicy stuff so Mormons on Mars Bopha whoever you want all right so so if I have my way there next summer there's gonna be Hilton in that crater all right so you've got this crate hub what's the diameter of the crater approximately it's it's um about Oh a couple hundred kilometers across it's a big crater so like a huge stadium sized yeah okay but it's big for a rover but very very huge stadium for you comparing so there's hundreds of clubbers to a stadium for so no sorry I think hundreds of meters sorry hundred kilometers yeah yes or is it as nice as the medal and so it's like Masada that's nice of like 9 million Keystone arenas the older the new medal is it's a it's a big crater I was off by a thousand all right who is it happens all the time it happens all the time so all right so you go you go fifty hundred million miles so Mars and land in a crater that's you know a hundred miles across that's pretty good like that's a really good hole-in-one yeah not only that we actually landed in a landing ellipse which is sort of the that the area that you shoot for that was only about 15 miles across and that that's a first that we've been able to control our landing to that extent with that crazy cockamamie plan that's what the engineers did for it exactly otherwise an airbag would just bounce its way out of the crater and it would be no good to you but that's why we're able to land in a much more interesting place and we were landed before because before you need a landing he lives so we've actually picked the most boring places on Mars to land before cuz you want to be safe so you pick somewhere really flat but you want to go to the mountains the canyons the craters but we haven't dared do that before now we were going to go to a little flat area between the mountains Angela and the Balan is the first time we ever do that and so now we can see these mounts and the distance and we're gonna get to them we never been to a place like that how many times we landed on Mars before oh let's see successfully or yeah weights right I believe in my the what yes oh no how many times did we send something and it just hit the Sun yes but I guess we've had about five successful landings before to Vikings Oilers no little soldiers I think sojourner annex um so six alright no wait am i there - Vikings - Viking Sojourner Phoenix II tumors tumors seven so for your just naming comic book carry so this is this is number seven but we've had a lot i've we've had as many attempts that and the russians have like you know dozens of attempts that went they have a filled government well but they they they did better at these all putin's for get better at venus yeah yeah mars is for venus sorrowfully gone good know the fan brush from this comes later the russians are from venus america's even mars will get to veena will get to venus yeah i don't need to bring up venus my bad I'm sorry don't get don't go getting off venereal on me so remind me that's the technical scientific nail yeah verbs nerd bros so what's the what's the warranty on on the Curiosity rover well you know we've been pretty unreliable with our warranties before but this once what's the last two years two years I mean we've been unreliable and that they usually that's longer so so the engineers really did it on purpose so you can like genuflect in front of them the mers the last brothers were spies in Mars exploration Rovers the last two Rovers were supposed to last 90 days one of them still going eight years later now these are supposed to last two years but the power source will last more than ten and so we're you know we don't want to get overconfident but potentially we could be there a long time so let's go down the list of the cool things that Mars has in common with earth what's the top of your list hi my list too will compare what's the top of your list should we start with Jess and cut em out oh they just stab one of my favorite parts of Mars they just put a Shake Shack in there I went to lie there still along just wherever you want to go you're like all right not gonna go now it takes two and half years to get there but there are no lines there's no line lamp like a camera set up you can check it online if there's gonna be no border it yeah yeah I would I would have to say the coolest thing is the the riverbeds they're dried up but they speak to us of flowing water which is something we like a lot so so there's there's dried up riverbeds there's volcanoes and they have a bay meander there may meander the news so thanks slow-moving Warriors were water I mean LEDs so there it was water on Mars yes well he knows water and not like liquid ammonia well at one point when we just had pictures from orbit people said well they look like rivers but could the echo to be ammonia could it be liquid co2 you sure it's not die dr. pepper you sure yeah well post-apocalyptic Mars could be in a post-apocalyptic state where there was light well that's what this guy Percival Lowell that's what basically what he said uh you know a hundred years ago so you know you should talk basically we're equal yeah you yeah but Sarah really move minds you I wonder our solution yeah we know I mean it from Dex it's that that was a theory that Mars was sort of a dying civilization and that's where the rivers came from but um once we you know we've people thought well how do you know it's water but now that we've been there with these other Rovers that was the main finding the exciting thing we found rocks on the surface minerals that are only made by flowing water so we've kind of nailed that one with the last Rovers I thought it was only made by standing order yes well sand again we stopped found signs of standing and flowing because there's ripple marks so know you can make minerals out of flowing water standing water right then watching you to talk makes me feel a so dog yeah no but that's what you gonna say that it makes you feel a lie yeah a lot yeah okay yes now we found this stuff for GRS I know they solve for minerals that we there's no way to make them we don't know of any way to make them other than sort of precipitating out of Watty shall get a delta a class on how to make minerals out of it yeah he knows so I like the polar icecaps you gotta love the ice cap we got ice caps they got ice caps Morris rotates in 24 hours we rotate in 24 hours right actually not quite 24 hours huh what's the exact location ours is slightly slower it's like a half an hour longer in the day which is strange so the people studying Mars are they on earth timer on Mars Todd they're on Mars time actually was out there last week out we're at Gmail I'm not on Mars Marvis that was a jab more for party animal Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena where we're running the rover from and and the day is on Mars time which changes compared to California time and it's really an odd experience time isn't the same as go for any time well sometimes it is but it's what he's past at your hours up it goes down by half an hour a day which is convenient if you're stuck in traffic but um but actually it's it's very weird because it gets to the point where it's completely the opposite and it's fine if you're you know a grad student or whatever and you're just doing that but if you if you have a family or whatever it leads to like divorces and psychosis and you know bad things how many Mars divorces has there been I can't give you a precise number but I can tell you it's not zero okay but but it's about a 24-hour day and Mars is tipped on its axis about the same degrees that we're tipped on our exit so Mars has seasons that is the cause of the seasons by the way it's not because we get closer to the Sun farther from just saying okay Wow I didn't know it I'm here but you didn't know how much he thought they didn't know right so you can think this through cuz you knew that the southern hemisphere has opposite seasons to us and if earth were closer to the Sun one time of year than another if that's what made summer than all of Earth would have summer at the same time and we don't so our distance the Sun can have nothing to do with yards all the odds but on Mars distance to the Sun changes the season because Mars has a non circular orbit and southern summer on Mars is about hot or hotter than northern summer because Mars is weird in that way so it's it's it's combination of the two on Mars why do you guys just oh do you mind you mind we're talking we feel what were your favorite things about Mars no I like the ice caps it's rotates about the same it's got seasons it's you know it's it's red that's just cool it's just cool basically it reminds you of Australia it's just I I I'm not surprised that it has been sort of with us in our culture and in our lore for so long so can we talk about in the next before we even knew any of that stuff we could see that it was this red planet that had this weird path in the sky it made people think of the God of War and all the stuff and it's definitely under our skin for a long time so Mort and now it's one of those razor blades for ladies yeah another penis is super hard it didn't work half a point for it so Jim what we need is a race like it was a pretty good effort Oh Mars for men but that's what we need uh so one thing Sarah you would mention your resonance with Percival Lowell uh-huh yeah he thought he saw canals I know it's the famous Martian canals but let me ask what will probably be well no there's no but such answer before it happens means please translate that's a nice way yes he said there's not a polar caps yeah I said lift with no water yeah yeah what yes we're gonna work yeah well we we used to think back in the days of your buddy Percival we used to think of polar caps were water which is kind of makes sense because that's what polar caps are made out of but turns out Mars is really cold in there dry ice it's frozen co2 there's a little bit of water there but it's mostly it's mostly dry ice so dry ice should have like a political party exactly you could yeah very good machine busters yeah in some of the ice you could do like a bird have a sculpture totally you would not get bit okay so so the Phoenix lander went to the ice caps right it went pretty close yeah went to the edge so we have we have one lander that we actually sent right up to the edge and um found ice in the soil which was really cool what water ice in the soil yeah yeah yeah so so there is no ice cappuccino we found ice cap yeah it is there's still water on Mars there's frozen water just underneath the soil in the high latitude with no regular water there muttering water weddy water there may be a big scientific committee weird okay I did a club soda blue well Jim wait clumps me if you have the water and you have the co2 you have to make club soda you could the Jim is right now can I be on NPR all you need is hops and you can make beer yeah bars is full of beer Mars is a college party all right so why did I go with the boundary what do they care I mean the the Mars caps shrink and grow depending on winter or snorts yeah they shrink and grow and there's a whole history there of climate change on Mars in in layers and the cap so by by trying to understand but trying to investigate that stratigraphy we can learn about the long-term climate history and just getting to that water ice was he when you show stratigraphy yeah what do you mean layers I mean layers can I wait yeah layers that's what a secret but it sounds more sciency if I say straight Oh what is deny that yeah this is just curious it sounds a little too much like strategic you know yeah Tegra fee yeah yeah that's not that's your geology side coming out in you it's true it's true you caught me you guys have words that don't belong anywhere in this universe except for geology yeah but they belong a geology meetings but that's probably about it can I ask you something um Mars is red how do we know that's not all blood well it is right that way I mean let me take this one right well let me take this one yeah go for it Jim Marrs and you took correct me if I'm wrong Jim Marrs it Mars is red for the same reason your blood is right it's cool American yeah it's it's rust essentially just like your blood is red cuz it's like oxidized iron yeah keep hemoglobin team heme group is it I'm iron ox acidosis hey there fam thing is on Mars yeah so what are we sending people when are we sending people when do you want to yeah I mean now yeah yeah yeah yeah it depends what you mean by we if you mean by we the data NASA but we'll I mean China you mean China then all bets are off if you mean NASA it's it don't hold your breath it's gonna be decades but if because literally that would be in about seven minutes or so think of time so what could hold there anyway it's uh yeah actually pretty clever but not a good hit but it may it may not be NASA there are these private companies now that are talking about about trying to uh about trying to go let the radio audience know that Eugene lights out by breath he held his breath for 15 seconds and his face turned beet red as an actor I can make blood flow to my anyway hey thanks good emulating Mars so what yeah when so no time soon well no time soon for NASA you know that some of these Silicon Valley zillionaires are talking about mounting their own missions and there are other countries getting in the game people were talking about a new space race it's it's hard to predict the future in the 1950s you read science fiction and people talked about first going to the moon in the 90s and then there was a push for it so if if we decided we wanted to or somebody decided they wanted to they we could be there in a decade but III don't see NASA doing that anytime soon what if the five of us agree do you think that would be enough yeah we need more how much you need yellow pens are you independently rolling like five bucks yeah alright so what's the right number of people do you think for such a mission and what and how about the like the sex ratio and is it you know is it is it celibate people for three years or we expect look how often are they gonna have say well right yeah when we set people there will they be having sex I'm just wondering Dan and then you can have and the mission will be long enough because it's a year there you gotta hang out there because the orbital alignment of Earth and Mars requires you wait another couple of years until the configuration will serve your trip back so the total round-trip is three four years right yeah you could like so have babies on Mars absolutely but you know the radiation could be a problem with the having babies thing so they can also stay inside the I'm not sure I wouldn't know inside the ship doesn't help you in relationship could be even worse radiation wise because a little bit of shielding makes it worse because the radiation comes in in splatters the atoms part makes neutrons and it's actually worse to have a little bit but when you say we could send somebody there in ten years do you mean to die right away basically it's necessarily there they would have about four hours and I hope they have sex during that time because they're about to die yeah now that's the dead sex bodies which won't be made for motivations Ferrara that's one of the major major motivations for our rad instrument on curiosity we want to know how deep you have to build your shelter so when there's a solar storm you get in it so you see you don't just all get cancer okay so there's that there's the ambient radiation and then there's an extra dose you get during a solar flare that was aimed your way right good so how long could a person live possibly in a shuttle on Mars like a day a week a year well we're trying to figure that out for perspective a year on Mars just hanging out on the surface and a normal year would be like um it like a hundred missions to the moon and back now the the astronaut radiation machine radios or both or but and don't know that about but I understood it would be well here's it would be about getting a hundred chest x-rays which um maybe doesn't sound I hate that it's certainly sound I'm consuming yeah but but ten years on Mars might kill you unless we figure out how to make a shelter now you probably could make a shelter just by going underground oh yeah we're still working that problem okay in fact most what if it was a really good ten years though yeah well exactly I think the interesting thing is people have proposed one-way missions and there's been lots of volunteers in other words would use the point of a one-way mission to boldly go to so discipuli died Yeah right yeah no but why why not people would write songs about you oh well okay a one-way mission because it's more feasible it's cheaper and it's hard to bring it's hard to bring someone back actually we can't even bring rocks back we tried the sample return mission we tried to design them to land something and then you have to bring another spacecraft fuel it and then launch it it's technically a lot harder if I'm going to Mars I want you to do that as Donald you want to come on yeah see I would too but the interesting thing is it's been proposed what if we could do one wee mission there been lots of volunteers and we're not talking just crazy people okay you're talking extra crazy people yeah I want to go to a download diet Mars what you doing no no no I get enough excitement on my morning Shh would you go to Mars and die there well having say I wouldn't you wouldn't no no no I'm gonna now name locations that you can fly don't have sex you tell me where you what have we throw at a hotel yeah Philadelphia are you talking one way one lion tell you one way that's true now I'd have to think oh you know what it's wrong way but you don't get the ticket till you get to the other side okay only miss with the crowd I know I'm sorry everyone it doesn't cost ten times as much to bring you back maybe two or three times as much anybody's got $10 has $30 you got a hundred you have 300 you have a million you have three million well it's a factor of a few it magnifies though because you have to bring the return vehicle and you have to bring the fuel Seneca Valley or make you feel when you get there live in the future have filling stations on route this is the future we all thought we'd be in already and you're telling me I gotta haul it with me game starting late on an asteroid ticket and eat it I thought I could already be eating hamster rides get on it science and on that note thanks for joining us you

Channel: Nerdist

Views: 1,081,367

Rating: 4.8831463 out of 5

Keywords: Nerdist, JPL, StarTalk, Mars, Chris Hardwick, NASA, Astrophysics, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Nerdist Channel, Science, Mars Rover, deGrasse Tyson, Curiosity

Id: WBQn0nD27nc

Length: 35min 31sec (2131 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 17 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

They are obviously so drunk.

[u/Mitoshi]

Sarah is so gone!

[u/[deleted]]

That was awesome.

[u/anonanonandon]

EAT IT!!!

[u/MuteNation]

Why in the world doesn't Neil do a podcast or radio show? or does he I don't know?