Space Force: A New Domain with Neil deGrasse Tyson

[Music] this is star talk neil degrasse tyson here your personal astrophysicist i serve as the director of the hayden planetarium right here in new york city at the american museum of natural history and today's episode we're going to talk about the science in the space force space force of course i got my co-host chuck nice jack hey just a reminder to everybody i serve as the director of my town home here in jersey okay there you go there you go and one of our old-time favorites here on star talk to help us navigate the space force we've got my friend and colleague and geek in chief charles liu charles hi so good to see you and i'll just uh tell you that i'm the director of absolutely nothing okay that means you're getting work done you see i hope yeah you can be productive or you can be creative but you can't be both so i don't know so what we're going to talk about is the space wars oh allow me to remind everyone that charles is a professor at the city university of new york on staten island and he's an associate in our department of astrophysics at the american museum of natural history so i get my dose of charles whenever i want and i get a dose of you whenever i want you know it works out great we're talking about the space force and later in this program we're going to bring on major general deanna burke she's a general in the u.s space force yes this is real in our third segment we're going to talk about space junk with the general and we're going to bring in an aerospace engineer who specializes in space junk yes who's a friend of star talk he's been on before so let's get let's get started here so so i don't know how many people you know read my 600 000 page book which one neil which one which it's called accessory to war the unspoken alliance between astrophysics and the military it's all in there it's what what role uh being an expert on the universe has to what that has to do with any kind of uh military operation military hegemony uh on on domination whatever people were doing in the history of civilization there was an astronomer right there because the sky enabled people to navigate and charles what is the greatest navigation system ever devised what you mean the sky and no navigation you mean gps gps thank you that's the one you're looking for okay gps yes you can find gram you know the directions to grandma's house so all this is uh is pivots on navigation and there's always some kind of astronomer astrophysicist in the mix and so uh if anyone is interested in sort of the the deep history of that relationship it's all in the book or you can just listen to this show and not buy the book okay you can do either let me just tell you i got a little note from your uh publisher here neil shut up [Laughter] keep pushing the book you're the only guy i know who actually promotes this book by going hey you know you don't have to get it no because i can't i'm not making people spend any money you know you can listen to this show and dad just don't get the book just don't get the book yeah no no get the book people uh so we had a a star talk on national geographic episode where we sort of introduced the concept of a space force before it was formally designated as such and we showed some footage of me visiting the thule air force base in greenland greenland oh my gosh which is not green at all it's not it's cold that's what i'm talking about what i liked about that episode was uh neil got off the plane in the beginning of the episode he had on like a jacket it was kind of old yeah yeah i was kind of close hello hey what's happening i got this i got it by the end of the episode neil you couldn't see his face he had four parkers chuck i don't think you could resist the statement why there are no black people in here let me tell you something there was not one brother not one brother in greenland and they had and neil showed up and there and they were like oh wow what are you doing here well at that tool air force base in the top of the world they monitor satellites and missile threats and anything from space that could be coming over the pole and now that is under the auspices of the space force and we're going to find out more about how that works from uh general burt uh later in the show but right now charles i want to get some physics out of the way before we break into that second segment um you know we we can think of ways you might destroy a satellite if there's any kind of military conflict on orbit and uh something that shows up in a lot of sci-fi stories um even movies that are not sci-fi just phi okay is the emp electromagnetic pulse the electromagnetic pulse now that's that made a cameo in uh ocean's eleven you might remember that okay it was an emp that took out the power grid in las vegas when they um when they robbed the the safe also there was an emp in the matrix the matrix yes of course okay nebuchadnezzar the nebuchadnezzar and all the the sentinels were coming at them and they they can't attack them one by one but an emp can take them all out that's exactly what they showed so charles yes my my fellow physicist yes tell me about emps what are they and why why do they destroy machines and not people no it's very simple electromagnetic pulse is a burst of radiation it could also contain electrons but mostly it's high energy radiation that will disrupt electronics think about it if you're ever listening to radio and a lightning strike a lightning bolt hits nearby for a moment your radio goes brief bit of static the bottom line is and we'll keep this super short the electromagnetic and electromagnetic pulse can simply be created by detonating a very large nuclear device maybe a few tens or maybe a few hundred miles up from the earth's surface and if it's a powerful enough burst it will blast so much pulse out into the environment that it will fry any electronic devices communication systems or power grids in its vicinity so you wind up so you're not talking about the blast the physical blast you're talking about the electromagnetic blast that's associated with those bombs as well that's right the the physical blast is bad enough but there were some nightmare scenarios back in the 80s where maybe an enemy could take a huge bomb put it a couple hundred miles up above the continental united states detonate it create an electromagnetic pulse from coast to coast and wipe out all communications and command and control of the united states before a single shot was fired wow electromagnetic pulse so can we protect against electromagnetic pulses yes to some extent uh the military knows how to harden things to protect it from electric magnetic pulse for example air force hardened in quotes i like the way you said that's right you said you uttered that charles that's right that was that was it charles this word is in quotes yeah air force one for example is hardened uh against emp but unfortunately you can only do so much uh before you will be overwhelmed if the blast is too close or too powerful so is this the famous faraday cage you can stick it in you can help that will help yes when you surround something uh with metal but also don't forget uh tin foil hats different kind of pulse yeah that's a different kind of pulse yeah absolutely very effective right so if you surround something with a a metallic frame then the electromagnetic energy gets stopped at that outer surface right it sort of goes around the outside something called the skin effect the skin effect yeah very cool very cool so if you want uh satellites to survive an enemy attack not by missiles but by an emp you'd want to harden them in this way yes for example there are other ways so in the all the examples of this that you have seen in film have they done it right like how about in ocean's 11 no i mean that wasn't wasn't a bomb it was just something that made the pure electromagnetic pulse and apparently this high energy radiation is not melting the flesh off of the people who detonate the switch unfortunately you're a morbid dude have you have you have you gotten this checked out no you know i haven't you're still it's still rampant with me it's just happening man i can't help it okay um so so how is it that you can have a pulse that doesn't then harm the people who engage the pulse a pulse is electromagnetic and therefore it generally passes through the human body if it's strong enough it can scramble you cause you you know injury the way like a radiation burn might but generally speaking it takes much less to damage an electronic system than it does to damage us okay all right all right i can get that plus i presume if you design an emp detonator you could tune the frequencies to be just what would be most damaging to a circuit and not to whatever might be the electrochemistry of the human body it's possible but it's a little harder to do that though uh when you have a bomb going off especially a nuke uh a lot of radiation goes out from a lot of ranges that's just the way it goes yeah and you just take it and so yeah human beings are under threat but a human being at a certain distance will wind up being damaged less than an electronic device at that same distance or even at a greater distance right right okay all right all right cool well we got to take a quick break and when we come back charles you can stay with us and we're going to bring on a major general deanna burt who's who's in the space force this is i don't know where the space force where's where are you space well um the air force has designated a march uh which is based on a piece by john philip souza called the invincible eagle however no lyrics have yet been written oh oh okay so this is waiting for for the moment we're waiting for charles to utter the lyrics that's much better than mine which was just space force nothing but space force [Laughter] all right guys we take a break we're gonna come back with an actual member of the actual us space force on star talk we're back star talk we're talking about the space force space force and i got my co-host chuck nice jack hey hey hey chuck you're still going to chuck nice comic thank you sir yes i am you are indeed and and our resident geek in chief for a return visit his nth return visit we say mathematically because we've lost account charleston plus one uh charles liu always good to have you back here charles thanks so much we're talking about the space force and for this segment we are bringing in an actual physical human being person who's part of the space force major general major general deanna bert deanna welcome welcome general welcome to star talk yeah thanks dr tyson it's a pleasure to be here with you guys today excellent and i've got you now that we're just using uh our actual titles please i am lord nice okay lord nice [Laughter] your lordship yeah we've we got dr lou dr tyson major general burt and lord knight okay organized uh so just some of you your pedigree i mean you guys have these titles which are very precise in the military world but this sounds so impressive just listening from the from the outside so as i as i have it written here your commander of the combined force space component command of the u.s space command did i get that right yes sir you did cool cool and you're also vice commander of space operations command at vandenberg vandenberg space force base in california wow yes sir that's different from the commander of vice that's different from being vice commander that was that was my former position that's what i used to do different operations there and you and you were formerly at peterson uh uh space for air i knew it as peterson air force base now peterson space force base colorado i visited that uh when i served on the board of the space foundation and correct me um general is that where they control uh gps satellites is that yes sir out at shrever space force base that's about 12 miles uh east of peterson okay both in colorado for sure there it is so so tell us what is what is your actual role as a major general in the new u.s space force so thanks dr tyson i think again we talked about that i have two hats so my first hat that you mentioned i'm a functional component command working directly for general dickinson the us space command commander so i command control about 17 000 military and civilian personnel to provide combat space effects to the other combatant commands the multi-domain fight uh and our coalition partners uh and the nation just to be clear multi-domain means other branches of the armed forces is that correct absolutely so okay again space is not just done for space's sake it's done to be able to provide those war-winning effects uh both to the nation and to the other services so they can fight and win uh the fights that they come against on the service side though my other hat that you mentioned and i'm a vice commander i also work on the generate sustain uh and present for the air space force and how do we put forces together so i'm really it's good that i have the two hats and one way i'm looking at how do we make sure the forces are ready uh to be presented to as the vice commander to then present to the combatant command in my joint hat to do that war fighting mission so you have do you have a degree in aerospace engineering so what we were you thinking back then gee i want to be general in the u.s space force that isn't invented yet like what's what's going through your head not even close i i am a first-generation college student in my family and so that was a big deal yeah you know yet you could have done just a little less yeah like seriously you're the first to do it you're just like i'm just going to blow up the road behind me for everybody else right you're just going to be completely embarrassed if you try to follow in these footsteps yeah i'm the first generation i'm now a major general i'm head of all space and uh yeah you know and i got 17 000 people reporting to me so your lordship i want you to imagine you're my brother who's three years younger than me yeah it doesn't go really well yeah that's what i'm saying yeah yeah okay so what was what was your brain transition from getting a quote simple engineering degree to landing as an officer in the military so i think i entered dr tyson the same way many people come into the military for college i mean my parents couldn't afford to send me to college uh the air force offered me a four-year degree if i was willing to pursue pursue stem science technology engineering or math uh i took aeronautical engineering at embry rental aeronautical university in daytona beach florida it was far enough away from home that i didn't see my parents every weekend but i could go home to jacksonville florida where my family was when i wanted to um i was a space coast baby so space was always interesting to me growing up with the shuttle program and all those space coast is the east coast of florida in the northern section where where we have cape canaveral so i don't know how many people know that that's just called space coast but it certainly is and and glad to hear that you had a little bit of space baptism from that exposure okay go keep going but but i thought you know i was going to do my for and done because when you take a scholarship you owe four years back to the military but i fell in love with the people and the mission uh and here i am 29 years later so uh it's been really good to me and i've learned a ton and now i've crossed over three months ago from the air force to the space force and it's just been amazing amazing ride so here i just want to ask very quickly because it's a just a bit of an aside a bit of a bit of a digestion who came up with the name space force because i'm just going to say it's it's so very clever no i think the the name united states space force identifies the domain that we work in and it's a warfighting domain and then the force that executes just like you have the united states air force the united states army uh again they typically associate with the domain that they operate in okay now so we we've got to get to breast tax here because there's some percent of the public i don't think it's the majority but it's enough of them for me to bring the question to you uh they're concerned that space force is sort of the escalation of military tensions in the world and that it's it's just we're just gonna have uh laser fights and and and bombs in space and i don't think people see this as a positive step as opposed to being either neutral or a peaceful step for the future of the security of the world could you just react to that i i totally understand and understand as a military member i don't want to see a war that extends into space that's not good for anyone that's not good for our coalition partners commercial industry anybody so we don't want to see that but like any other uh department we have to be ready to fight and win our nation's wars wherever they go uh so again our enemies are showing and the threats have evolved uh general raymond and general dickinson have both testified to many things that are on orbit today uh by our strategic adversaries or competitors china and russia that exist as we speak right now so it's not that the threats are coming the threats are on orbit and we have to be prepared to uh respond uh and react and protect our assets and for those who who are into our archives we actually have general raymond as a guest on an earlier episode of star talk so you can dig that out of our files when you say threat what exactly are you referring to uh as a threat when it comes to uh our low earth orbit uh positions or any any earth orbit or any earth orbit so so you have direct descent uh anti-satellite munitions so uh asaps uh for both low-earth orbit and beyond and that's been proven by the chinese in 2007 they launched an asad and killed one of their own hit one of their own dead weather birds in 2007 blew it into thousands of pieces we are still tracking to this day uh and will be for generations to come uh so that created un long-lived debris that will affect everyone in the domain not just the department of defense and it'll affect china as well right that's like peeing in your own in your own bathtub yeah yeah i mean what what were they doing is that like a guy who starts a fight by punching himself in the face you know just like i'll show you how tough i am like what the heck what we'll do is we've got more baja coming in in the third segment and that's his total expertise so so let's uh that's a nice seed planted for that so let's let's keep going on what what other threats do we see so the other options that are out there again general raymond and general dickinson in their congressional testimonies talked about both of these one is a chinese robotic arm so they have a robotic arm in geosynchronous orbit that they are doing testing with so if you've seen the show space force one of my favorites uh in the second episode you see the the sound let's be clear that's a comedy right steve carell okay and when you see them cut the solar panel off of the satellite funny haha but when you talk about today on orbit the chinese have a robotic arm that's exactly what they could do they could rip off a piece of a satellite or hurt it in some way uh throw it into an unusable orbit so again that robotic arm is very scary in a very high interest orbit for communications missile warning and all the capabilities that we depend on to protect and communicate with our forces the second one again is what we call the russian nesting doll so the russians launched into low earth orbit a nesting primary vehicle launched an orbital engagement system that came out of that satellite and then from that satellite came a kinetic kill vehicle it shadowed one of our high value assets in low earth orbit for a period of time that again to us uh was not appropriate because they were testing that capability and instead of testing against their own capabilities they were shadowing and testing near one of our high value assets so again not not good happening every day and on orbit and their capabilities continue to grow and again those are all the unclass level we've uh recognized that security is important uh for us but at the same time how do we portray the american people what are the threats on orbit it's really hard to understand because satellites don't have moms right no one can understand what the threats are in orbit because you don't see them every day as you do in the other domains and you get pictures up so it's really hard to communicate to the american people what this is and the show is really important to doing that and so i appreciate that you do these because it makes it real to folks it helps them understand uh some very complex things as the boss says space is hard how do you translate that to the american people interesting very uh perceptive point that satellites don't have family that you can then get them to plea for their safety but satellites do have financial value not only in the value of the hardware itself but in the marketplace that it enables be it uber or tinder or bank records or anything else is there some clear way and is it your job to communicate how deep that threat can be to our way of life or there's some other agency that whose job that is and not yours no that's absolutely ours i mean we if there is a threat to the american way of life in the american way war if we lose these capabilities i mean gps i'm a former gps squadron commander i mean one of the things we talk about with all the time with gps is not only the navigation signal which we all use every day to travel the world but also the timing signal the timing signal is used to stick many of our cell towers and communication networks that you use every day as well as the new york stock exchange so imagine if that timing signal is gone what does that do to trade what does that do to commerce i mean those are uh things that happen every day general one of general dickinson as the us space command commander slogans is never a day without space so again absolutely his wheelhouse is the base command commander to defend and protect uh all those capabilities and most people don't even know i mean i try i really i try but they don't know how much of your everyday life is touched by space assets even beyond simple gps i mean that i don't think people appreciate that and so i think there there's a task ahead of us all in this to try to communicate um the value of what you are doing and do these satellites that you guys are uh responsible for uh for a lack of a better term do they include uh private sector uh property though that's a good good question yeah no we're just going to understand your lawrence great question she's sticking with that title you know what see but this is the difference between civilians and people in the military people in the military like oh you want to be that i will make you regret that chuck you're gonna have to change your twitter handle that's what's gonna happen i think lordship nice has a great ring to it sometimes it actually i hate to admit it but it does it does yeah yeah so anyway yeah that's a great question so what i would say is um we track 32 000 pieces on orbit of that 32 000 about 5 000 are active satellites or active objects uh and from that then about 10 percentage of those are government resources for the united states of america whether that be department offense or other agencies but government capability when you guys did this interview with general raymond in 2019 we had about 1800 objects that were live on orbit and that was quoted in that podcast today think 5 000. we've almost tripled and you might say well why did we triple that's not government because i'm only 10 we're only 10 of that the the triple has happened in the commercial market the cost of launch has reduced based on the number of folks who are bringing that capability to bear and reducing launch costs and now you see companies engaging in building satellites uh spacex with starlink uh getting ready to launch 100 at a throw to get 5g in low orbit one web i mean there are many companies now that are launching satellites uh and we only see that continuing to explode so by the way charles and i have our co-authors on papers that use data from the hubble space telescope which is a honkering satellite up there you know not enough people think of it as a satellite it's a satellite but it's a big one the size of a greyhound bus you know i'd like to think that some major portion of your responsibility is protecting that telescope i'm just saying between you and me absolutely and we do that day in and day out to ensure nothing from a debris perspective or another active payload would conjunct or hit you uh also as any of those uh objects re-enter earth's atmosphere we're tracking those and reporting those working with state department if we predict a landing in another country uh or how that would uh happen in through u.s space command so that those are happening day in and day out and that's our bread and butter of our job i think what we'll change here shortly which we really need to normalize the domain and this is all space traffic management right how do we operate on orbit satellite to satellite and is free and fair for all is the department of commerce so the there's an ndaa a national defense authorization act that says the department of commerce will be the lead for space traffic management we have been doing that as the government because the government had the lion's share of of capability on orbit due to the cost of entry but as i said earlier you can see now it's tripled it's in the old days yeah yeah so we need an faa for space i'm i'm reminded that noah the national oceanic and atmospheric administration is a branch of the department of commerce and so here we are monitoring climate and weather recognizing its direct impact on the economic security of the nation so charles do you have a question yes it would it would be great thank you i have two very short questions if that's okay uh first of all um you mentioned domain right as we know the united states generally considers space as being 50 miles on up so i presume that your domain certainly starts at 50 miles perhaps before then but how far up does it go does it go past the moon does it go to the moon or lunar orbit does it go to mars in other words is space force really the force for the domain of the universe itself or just a little bit less than that no general he wants you to protect from here to the edge of the the cosmic horizon right that's what that sounds like so what i would say is uh as the u.s space command unified command plan so when you're a combatant commander you have a unified command plan that defines what your area of responsibility is every geographic combatant commander has that so whether your european command pacific command you have a defined area of responsibility for general dickinson as the u.s space command commander the unified command plan signed by the sec def and the president states that he is responsible for 100 kilometers above the earth's surface to infinity and beyond and beyond that completely general question jen will go back to that document and you have to put in and beyond you have to go please do that and by the way yeah you have to stretch it out in tight you know and in all seriousness uh to dr lou's question is i would say to you day to day dr lou we are concerned mostly with going in so 22 500 miles and into that hundred kilometer area is where we focus day to day geo is is it's code for geostationary yes when you talk about the moon and you talk about where we're going in 2024 by putting astronauts on the moon to stay where elon musk is in his adventure to get to mars you can see though that in the next five to ten years uh it will become geo and out and how far out is appropriate uh one of the discussions we've had is about geo times 14 and you might say hey deanna dr lou may know this answer but geo times 14 is where you have a three body problem between the earth the moon and the sun and so we're trying to define requirements in the military of how far out do we want to start looking for the future to then build requirements and build systems and and do budget requests etc for all of that so uh that sounds like the lagrangian point i guess right you have to start yes you have to start paying very close attention to the garage surfaces and and lisa ju figures and things like that right right okay now wait a minute no no no no no no no lagrange what is you can't just drop in no no i really i would love to ask one more question and this is actually from my educators hat if that's okay general burton you bet um first uh let me just thank you on behalf of so many of us uh for your service to the country to keeping us safe to making sure that our lives are are as good as they are so thank you so much for that now there are people young men and women and uh young people all over who are looking at you and saying how can i be general burt not just education wise but like your opinions your thoughts when a young person comes to me and and says how can i become someone on the space force how can i become a guardian um they're going to be looking to you and because you know what what would you tell them as completely unironically you are indeed the very model of a modern major general that was a long walk around the block to get to that so to to land on the left gilbert and sullivan sullivan payload right yeah worth the effort right yeah it was worth it but the question is serious actually seriously no i agree and that was a long wait but that is awesome i like that um no what i would say is again to join uh the space force we see ourselves as a digital service so i'm looking for young folks who have innovative minds who want to ask why i love three-year-olds ask why why do we do things the way we do it's a new service we have a clean slate we can do anything we want in any way we want we value artificial intelligence machine and machine communication obviously the whole exploration of space and where this is going to go and if i were to meet a young 21 year old graduating college or a young 18 year old entering college i would say hey the the sky is not the limit it's endless uh and and there's opportunity that in their generation they will be operating and living in space uh in their lifetime and and how do we uh go to that new frontier so i think it's very exciting i think we're looking for educated folks with stem degrees we again obviously what we do is very difficult and complex so we're looking for that academic rigor and background to get out there and get after it but innovation and asking why are the two key things and i think this generation is stock full of it uh and ready to come hard in the space force and we have not had a recruiting problem it's been uh we're very small and lean uh purposely focused on mission but we have not we've seen again beating the doors down in every aspect to join the space force whether that be as officers or as enlisted members i need you to confirm are there are the new recruits actually called space cadets just to be clear guardians guardians guardians sweet guardians oh man now i want to join so now it could be star-lord nice let me ask chuck chuck i mean let me ask you charles do you think the first person to walk on mars is alive now yeah like elementary school or absolutely yeah okay maybe not elementary school maybe even in college i agree whoa wow that's really pretty pretty cool all right we're gonna take a quick break we're gonna lose charles dr charles liu i know but yeah but we got more coming in chuck i got okay we're not going to leave you hanging here call me anytime i'll be around charles you will are have been r and for will ever always be our geek in chief yes we'll be right back with the general and lord nice when star talk returns we're back star talk we're talking about the space force what is it what's going on what are they up to what are their priorities and how is it protecting all that we care and love about our modern lives got my co-host chuck nice jack hey hey hey great to be here and my special guest is u.s space force major general deanna burt general bert uh welcome this is your second segment with us and thanks for hanging on uh and and giving us this much time we're also going to bring in in a couple of minutes someone who is now i get to call him a veteran of star talk we have professor morba ja he's an associate professor in the department of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics at ut austin and i would think in terms of what he specializes in we get to call him an astro dynamicist and space environmentalist sounds like we're going to need some more of those going forward if environmentalism movement moves from the surface of the earth to space itself but we'll get to his expertise in a minute uh i just want to work our way into that and and ask general when we think of space warfare we're not always thinking of sort of uh machines that would like turn off the switch of a of a satellite or redirect it we're thinking of weapons that destroy and you mentioned in the second segment uh was it 2007 the chinese sort of did a kinetic kill on one of their own satellites i think we did shortly after that as well so what is that what does that mean for the present and future of the space environment well i think it's again as i said earlier no one wants a war that extends into space because those types of weapons particularly anti-satellite weapons that we talked about create huge debris fields that affect everyone and so again not not good so what we have to prevent against is how do we work in a multi-domain so thinking all of our other service partners how would we keep that anti-satellite munition from launching left of launch i don't want that to launch we don't want to see that debris so how would we work uh with all the other services in a joint fight to make sure that that didn't launch and use other capabilities so a fight that could extend into space doesn't necessarily mean it has a space answer it could have a land or a cyber or special ops or another element that helps us take away that threat particularly ground-based threats and so while that saddle while that anti-satellite weapon is on route a big part of that is through earth's atmosphere so you might expect the air force to have something to say about that and i want to jump in and and help protect you on the bottom end uh could be i i think the other piece is how do we also make ourselves resilient on orbit how do i make myself a hard target how do i get those indications of warning that if in fact it does a launch how do i confuse the seeker or the end game to hit me so that there's a miss so you want to duck is what you're saying you want to duck and cover we've heard that one before that many decades ago uh one more question before we we bring in uh uh our astro dynamicist is the uh the when we took out our own satellite if i remember if memory serves it was relatively lower in orbit so that most if not all of the debris that we created has already fallen out of orbit whereas the chinese satellite was much higher up where there's much less air resistance to drag it down and burn up did my am i remembering this correctly no absolutely uh as you will recall the the satellite that we shot down was a large dead satellite that was re-entering and it was such a size and the amount of fuel that was on it we were worried about it re-entering intact and hurting the population so again hit it at a much lower orbit as you said such that the debris and gravity would work again work for us and bring it all in or burn it up uh in smaller pieces so that's exactly what we did the chinese again did that more to higher orbit in low earth orbit and it then pushed debris up into other regimes as well as into low earth orbit and as i said earlier we're still tracking debris from that and will be for decades to come see now what what you just explained there i believe it's called american exceptionalism okay very much even when we blow stuff up we're cleaner about it so it's also called thinking ahead so i don't i just don't even understand how the chinese could do something like that but so let's bring in professor john just so you know professor um uh the good general here has has uh bestowed a new title on our comedian so chuck nice is now lord nice and she refers him as the lordship we'll we will require that of you for this remaining segment just so you know absolutely absolutely i'm here to serve [Laughter] so dr zha how many satellites are in orbit approximately yes dead and living okay well so so so if we talk about dead and living look we're we're talking upwards of like you know six six to ten thousand of these things dead and living uh but the living is four thousand but if we include the dead stuff then you know ten thousand or so um total stuff is like 30 000 things but most of the 30 000 things aren't complete satellites they're fragments and that's no so wait are you telling me we're tracking and this is for both of you major general and dr uh ja are we tracking and how far down can we track in terms of size these some of this has to be debris some of it has as you say uh the dead things what can we track yeah so look i mean the so the largest thing clearly is the space station right so we don't have an issue with that um but when we go on the smaller stuff but just to be clear this space station is the size of a football field so so so so goodness goodness to say we can we can track that but um yeah right if we can't do that we're in big trouble we're in big trouble i i think i could track that with a pair but now you know i could exactly so with a pair of binoculars from my roof so so this is what i'm calling it's not even low hanging fruit chuck this is like fruit on the ground turning rancid right is your ability to like yeah but uh yeah the smaller stuff really we're talking about softball size is really is really kind of the smaller stuff and um people clearly want to be able to get to like uh you know golf ball size things but that's really hard to do so i would say softball size is kind of on the smaller range of things so i'll ask you wait wait i'm sorry neil because now i'm scared to death from what you just said softball-sized things traveling at 17 000 miles an hour that's crazy so uh charles anything traveling chuck anything traveling in seventy thousand i don't get hit by a softball or a golf ball that's true exactly i got a feeling you won't be taking a bass but here's here's here's what scares me what do you do when you track it and you find out that it might become injurious to something else how did what then what okay this is going to hit whatever now what for the things we track uh again as he mentioned softball size and lower the only thing i would say is again i said earlier 32 000 objects is what we're tracking today roughly in a 5 000 active so when we talk about active versus inactive so if it's two inactive objects uh hey we're watching crash up derby occur there's not much to do we just have to watch the two objects what we call conjunct or hit each other and we predict that and we watch that closely because then that creates more debris right when they hit if it's a live object and a dead object obviously we're contacting the owner operator of the live object and giving them that information and asking them for consideration for move to protect their payload this is called safety of flight operations that we do here every day at the combined space operation center you have to have to tell people you got to tell people if i understand correctly almost all satellites retain a little bit of reserve fuel to adjust their position either to give themselves a new boost because the atmosphere is dragging on them or to avoid a collision is that correct absolutely so everyone has a certain amount of gas and what they can maneuver or not and again when we talk to those owner operators of those active satellites what kind of gas budget do they have and can they move uh if it's two live objects again we make the uh make the notification to both owner operators and then the discussion uh is between the two of how they're going to move we do this with both the chinese the russians commercial our coalition partners it doesn't matter who you are that mission is done every day from the combined space operations center here at vandenberg space force base wow so professor job we all saw the movie gravity okay and that was a documentary i'm told not just well you know anytime sandra bullock uh and clooney are in that for sure it's got to be educational it's educational so um my favorite is that he comes up to the spaceship and is knocking on the outside door but she was imagining it but that was just a funny little scene that's right uh so uh in that they do however portray a very real effect and i'm told it's called the kessler effect could you just briefly tell us what that is yeah so look there's there's this gentleman don kessler worked for nasa for a long time uh came up with this hypothesis that um given given the the increase in crowding of things on orbit and things going bump in in in the night that there there would be a tipping point as it were where even if you didn't launch anything else the population is self-growing because things keep on colliding and you can't prevent those collisions from happening so that's i think loosely what people understand as this kessler effect or kessler syndrome so that would mean that there's a catastrophic point where it's just a roller derby up there and everything or space derby everything is colliding making more and more debris colliding even more and then all space assets gets completely wiped out a never-ending chain reaction right right is that kind of a chain reaction thing well so so this is where uh people that fully embrace the kessler syndrome would say yes it's this chain reaction never ending um i i'm not a big believer in never ending things uh so so i would say that equilibrium at some point would be reached but equilibrium can also mean orbits become unusable so so the end effect is an orbit becoming unusable and clearly we don't want to see that happen but i think i think that's only unusable so i guess i'm not a fatalist and that it's all going to be terrible yes we care about this as the military but i think one is being an owner operator and as you said sir having the gas to be able to control your satellite and do orbit and station keeping properly and when notified being a a good operator of your capability second is when you get to what we would call your min fuel to deorbit or move to an unusable orbit you're able to do that and that's you know what we would say is that norms of behavior of how you should operate day to day so it's free and fair for all lastly i would say we were just at space symposium last week and a lot of discussion about debris removal so i think this kessler discussion also posits that you wouldn't have any debris or trash truck capability to go pick up debris i i think that's absolutely uh a business case for industry and commercial because again i go back to if the military were to do that let's say i have an arm that goes and picks up trash or does things it could be dual use so you don't want that to come from a military perspective you want that to come from industry and commercial uh to be the trash trucks or the pickup and to be fully transparent and they would be asked to service and go pick up things or put more gas on something that's that's capable of continuing mission uh but has run out of something that's uh like a propellant that it needs more gas so i think there's options here to not be so fatalistic we just haven't produced the technologies uh yet to get there so what about other things that could slam into satellites or even into earth like asteroid threats the hubble telescope itself has a safe mode where the lid closes and it turns its underbelly its sensitive underbelly towards earth during meteor showers of high expectation so that the micrometeoroids that come through and light up the sky would have a minimum lasting quote impact on the telescope if it hit so in your portfolio of things to worry about beyond russia china and possibly other uh other adversaries uh is there do you have natural uh disasters on your list oh absolutely every day in the environment as you know dr tyson is it's the environment is very harsh uh from solar flares various uh emissions from the sun that impact the satellites as you mentioned asteroids those kinds of things we work closely with nasa uh to be able to predict and talk to those media meteor showers is again that's more in their wheelhouse of tracking and how they do deep space work but that is shared with us uh and again we work to how do we protect our payloads just as you talked about flipping the hubble we we would be looking at those same kind of options to limit any damage to our capabilities as well is there any kind of regulatory global commission that tells what countries what they can and cannot do i remember china they deorbited a satellite or something i don't know what it was but they were like oh yeah by the way we don't know where it's going to come down i remember that remember that right and i mean like who who yeah so he's kind of watching no no it wasn't just that it wasn't just that truck they launched the the the booster and and yes professor john correct me if i'm wrong they had a booster that did did not contain the capacity to control its descent back to earth and which leaves it kind of random uh yeah professor did i get that right yeah yeah that that's exactly right and so so look i mean we have international law codified in things like outer space treaty and conventions with the un and all that other stuff but you know the language is widely interpreted and the implementation is like you know randomly assessed at best and isn't that from 1968 or something yeah yeah 1967 right wow i know the only other argument i would offer that other regulatory organizations that are involved obviously you have the fcc the federal communications commission so again when we start talking about satellite communications whether they be in low earth orbit or a geosynchronous orbit the deconfliction of frequencies so people aren't stepping on each other or you know interfering with each other uh intentionally as we work the design the other one is the international telecommunications union and that's who decides the has the slots out at geo so every one degree out in the geosynchronous belt uh our our slots that people can uh go out and register for and co-locate together so there are multiple satellites that fly in that one degree box and basically station keep and operate day in and day out together so it can be done i think some of the concerns moving forward is the proliferation of low earth orbit uh like we talked about starlink and oneweb uh in on the order of uh i think starlink i heard yesterday their new uh satellite registry that they're trying to do with the fcc is 25 000 satellites and low earth orbit yeah yeah that's a lot that's that that's pretty crazy you know but so so how do you regulate how they operate in that in that domain and again that station keeping and so we don't get this kessler effect we talked about earlier so again how do how do you regulate that this is some of the part i talked about earlier dr tyson about why the department of commerce and being the owner of space traffic management and getting them on board will be important uh the department of defense has played that role and and will continue to do so uh and partner with the department of commerce as they stand up but you can see the value that we needed there's a regulatory requirement and even international regulatory element kind of like the faa is for air yeah same thing for space yeah i think getting to the lordship's point uh there is no there is no global you know star trek federation that's going to do this it's all up to individual countries so the countries actually have to get together and say we are the bottleneck to all this stuff and we we we are the ones that are responsible for providing authorization and continuing supervision of all these folks let's agree to a set of standards norms of behavior that we can then hold our people you know accountable to and i think on the one point that the general made really quick on the dual use type stuff look when you go with commercial people that have the grappling arms that's also dual use technology so i think that the main thing is when i was a security policeman guarding nukes at maostrom i was taught a threat required intent opportunity and capability so so the thing that really separates hazard from threat is the intent piece so what kind of behaviors can we put in place to basically put away this threat stuff so we don't assume that everything is out to get us necessarily because the capability and opportunity for harm are always going to be present with dual use technologies so dr job brings up a great point it's it's understanding space domain awareness not just space traffic management space domain awareness is more isr intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance in space what is your pattern of life how do you normally operate is this unusual for you is this your norm how do you typically station keep all of those things play into that space domain awareness over the domain for all the players that are there and when something is or doesn't seem as it should be then that's when this discussion of norms of behavior having defined what is good now if we see something that is bad how are we going to respond and do it rise to the occasion of that it needs a military diplomatic or any of the instruments of power that the nation can bring to bear very really cool very important facts there that yeah just the existence of what could could be a threat if there's no intent we have to that is a conversation that's an analysis and that's where i don't trust ai i think people have to be in that equation ai is stupid i mean ai is about as smart as an earthworm man s-i stupid intelligence yeah we're gonna that's a whole other show by the way we're gonna have to call it quits there we ran over professor john great to have you on again thank and and and general burt delight to meet you for the first time and i hope this is not the the last time we see you uh yeah we will have continuing questions about this domain and what it means to earth to americans to and and to the future of space excellence now can i tell people that i know a two-star general now is that okay with you absolutely and that at 50 cents i'll get you a couple all right and chuck you just got to earn this she was describing uh one degree boxes out there on on so how many boxes are there um well it's round so it's got to be 360. very good you got it okay just checking it i knew he was leading you in that direction you earned your you earned your lordship today yes he earned star-lord right there star-lord i love it i love it all right that's that we really got to end it right there uh thank you all for making this work and making it informative and even fun neil degrasse tyson here for star talk as always keep looking up [Music] you

Channel: StarTalk

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Id: -Ju3YNTzXuE

Length: 54min 11sec (3251 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 30 2021