(upbeat music) - This is "StarTalk," and I'm your personal astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and we're here in a
"Cosmic Queries" edition. And I have a new co-host, never co-hosted before, Ray Ellin. Ray! - Hello, hello.
- Ray in the house. - Great to see you, Neil. - I know you 'cause
you're our warm-up guy, the warm-up comedian from
when we do live "StarTalks." - Four seasons now. - Four seasons.
- Four seasons, yeah. - So now we've put you
in front of the camera. - Great, fantastic, I'm ready. (Neil laughs)
I'm ready for it. - Can you handle it? - I think I can.
- Can you handle it? - "StarTalk" is such a fun show to work on.
- Oh, thank you. Yeah, that's not me, I'm
thanking you for 50 us. - There's a trickle-down effect. It starts with you and it runs through, it ripples through the entire cast and crew.
- Oh excellent. It's all labors of love for us. And I'm always delighted you make the crowd feel
at home and comfortable, you always insult them intermittently. - Very sporadically.
(Neil laughs) When they deserve it.
- When they deserve it. They deserved it when it happens. Excellent, and are you
active on social media? - I am. @RayComedy on Instagram. - RayComedy? - On Instagram, yeah.
- Instagram, okay. - Ray Romano is very upset
that I got RayComedy. - Okay. (laughs) - How did you get that? How, why?
(Neil laughs) I'm like, you're fine without it. And then Twitter is @RayEllin. - RayEllin. R-A-Y-E-L--
- L-I-N. - I-N, you got it, okay dude. - Thank you. - So, this is "Cosmic Queries." - [Ray] Love "Cosmic Queries." - And so, you got the questions, cold from our social media footprint. And bring them, I haven't
seen the questions. But the topic solicited is the new space race. - The new space race. - Yeah, not old boring space race where we only went to the Moon. The new space race where we're
trying to get into (laughs). - That's right, the new and exciting, updated space race.
- Updated space race. - Although this first question,
it does pertain to the Moon. It's from Ryan Espinosa on Facebook. And Ryan wants to know, "Why do you think "we haven't gone back
to the Moon in decades? "And would there be any
good sustainable reason "other than preparing for Mars "to have a permanent
research station there, "perhaps even to launch spacecraft?" - No. Okay, next. (laughs) - No reason at all. What about the launching spacecraft? - No, no, there could be reasons, but the economics is hard to justify. So you need a reason that
overrode the economics, like war. Or if China says, "We're gonna put military
bases on the Moon," we're going back to the Moon. 'Cause then we use that as
an argument to justify it. That's why we went to the
Moon in the first place. Russia was getting our upper hand. Here's something nobody talks about. We're 'Muricans, right? - 'Muricans.
- 'Murrica. Apostrophe M-U-R-R-I-C-A, 'Murrica. Our narrative of our history is that we are pioneers in space, okay? But let's look at it. The Russians came up
with the rocket equation, the equation that tells
you how much fuel you need to put a payload into orbit. Why does that matter? Because you need fuel to carry the fuel that hasn't burned yet to put the payload in orbit. So for every pound you
wanna put into orbit, you need much much more fuel than you'd otherwise think you'd need. And that's why the Saturn
5 rocket is so tall and the astronauts and all the payload is just an upper little section. All the rest of that is
just controlled bomb. So, the rocket equation was Russian. So the Russians put up the
first artificial satellite, which was... - Sputnik.
- Sputnik. And in fact I've got Sputnik right here. I got this in Star City, Moscow. I mean outside of Moscow. It's a very distant suburb
of Moscow where they, it's like our Houston, except it's really just for space. - Are there any cowboys there? - (laughs) No. So, this is the
International Space Station. (Neil grunts)
Okay. And then we go the next one down. This is Skylab.
- Oh cool. - Yeah, which was the, the Apollo-Soyuz Project, we used the Skylab as a space station. That's smaller than the
International Space Station. I've no idea what this is. It looks like a flying saucer. Could've been some prototype thing that the Russians designed. And what else do I have here? This is some large satellite. But we keep going. And there's Sputnik in
the tiniest of the dolls. - Look at that, that's a
very, very clever doll. - I don't know how this
translates to radio, but I just disassembled
one of these dolls. What are they called? - Those are the...
- Petrushka... The Russian dolls, yeah. The Russian dolls, the
nesting Russian dolls, there's a Russian name for 'em. - I was thinking of
Faberge, it's not a Faberge. - No, no, no.
- No, not even close. - So the littlest of one in there, normally they have heads of state or popes or prime ministers or tzars. These are spaceships. - And if you cracked that one open, there'd be a little bottle of vodka. And if you cracked that open, there'd be a little piece of potato. - I'm not (laughs) I'm not showing it. So, Sputnik, they had the first
non-human animal in space. Who was that? - A chimp?
- No. - Non-human animal?
- It was a dog. - Was it really?
- Yes! - What kind of a dog?
- Laika. It was a mutt. I don't know if it was a mutt, but I think it was kinda like a mutt. It was a stray dog from Moscow. - How would you feel, you're a stray dog, just running the streets of Moscow, and next thing you know
you're up in orbit. - Well, they had no plans
to bring it back alive. - Oh, wow. - So maybe you have second thoughts. However, I'm thinking to
myself, if I were dog, I could be a stray dog and die in the streets
of Moscow in the winter, or be the most famous dog
since Lassie and die in space. - That's not a bad option. Or how about just being adopted
by a family with a yard? (Neil laughs) - A rescue dog.
- Yeah, a rescue dog. Wouldn't that be sweet? - There's some bitterness about the fact there was no plans to bring it back alive. - And it was a Russian mutt. - Yeah, I think it's most
of some kind of breed, but I don't think it was, I don't remember it being a purebred. Anyway, they had... - It's (mumbles). - And the first human in space. And that was who? - The first human ever in space? - Yes, Yuri Gagarin. - Yes, it was Yuri Gagarin. - He said yes, that was a good. (laughs) You saved yourself on that one. If I answer quickly it meant I knew it! (Neil and Ray laugh) - That was very Stewie
and Brian right there. - That was very... So they also had the first... A lot of firsts. And then we landed on the Moon first and then we say, "We win." - [Ray] And obviously
we walked on the Moon. - I'm just saying, we landed on the Moon first
and we say, "We win the race," when almost every other
important achievement in space was achieved by the Russians. And the reality of that
progression of achievements is what spooked us. Because they were accomplishing things fasted and better than we were. And so then we leapfrogged it
and then we went to the Moon. So that's all I'm saying. - So, but going back to what Ryan asked. - I forgot the question. - No, it's okay. But why isn't the Moon
used to launch spacecrafts? - Oh okay, so. Here's the problem. If you're gonna leave
Earth to go to the Moon to then go to Mars, just go straight to Mars. You're gonna need fuel to land on the Moon because you have to slow down. Fuel is not just to go fast. Once you're going fast, how
are you gonna slow down? In our atmosphere you
can use air breaking, which is why we have heat shields. Because oh we need heat shields
otherwise you'd burn up. Glad you're going through the atmosphere, I don't need fuel to do it. Using the friction and shockwaves between the craft and the air to slow it down so that I don't need to use
retrorockets to slow down. You're going to the Moon,
you need retrorockets to slow yourself down. You have to carry fuel
that you're not using yet. So no, the Moon would not
be a place to organize to then go to Mars. You wanna organize, organize in zero G, in a Lagrangian point. They're these points
where gravity balances between the Moon and the
Earth and the planets where you just put stuff
there, it just stays. So you can make really big ships. And you leave from zero gravity and now you're not trying to climb out of what we call a gravitational well, which is all the exhaust that's
coming out of our rockets needs to do.
- That's interesting. You think that'll ever become a reality? - Possibly, but unless
there's a war driver, there's gotta be an economic driver. Otherwise I don't see it
happening ever at all. So I wrote a whole book on
this that I wanted to call "Failure to Launch: "The Dreams and Delusions
of Space Enthusiasts." And the publisher said, "No, we can't have the
word failure in a title, "that's just bad." But I loved the title. They said, "By the way, "isn't there a movie with that title?" Yes, except I'm using the title literally, "Failure to Launch." That one was figurative
about failing to leave home and get married. - So why didn't you just call it "Successes and Unsuccesses
in the World of Launching"? (Neil laughs)
- Unsuccesses. So, I settled on the title "Space Chronicles: Facing
the Ultimate Frontier." Half of that book is on why we didn't
continue to go to Mars. - My takeaway from this is that you've written so many books, you can't remember the names
of the books you wrote. That is remarkable.
(Neil laughs) I've just written so many,
I'm such a prolific writer, I don't know. That's amazing. - I didn't know it came out that way. - No, it didn't, that's awesome. That was pretty impressive, actually. - Can I give you my one
impressive book story? - Yeah. - My first time I ever met Carl Sagan. I was 17, I'm in his office, and I'm sitting across his desk. And he said, "I'm gonna give you a gift." He reaches behind, does not even look, grabs a book from the
shelf, and it's his book, and he signs it to me. And I said, "That is badass." Whatever you touch, it's
gonna be one of your books. (Neil laughs) - It's just a bookcase full of Sagan. - And then it was some years later, after my sixth book or something, I had them lined up behind
me and a kid comes in and I just reached back and I say, "Damn." I'm like, that's what I'm doing. - Did you reach back and
grab one of Sagan's books? - No. (laughs) - How many books have you written? - 15.
- 15, that's incredible. - But four or five of
them are co-authored, 'cause you can't know everything for everything you write about. But some of them I'm more
proud of than others, but it's an opus of my effort to communicate the universe to the public. - That's amazing. My sister Abby just wrote her
second book called "Duped." And I see firsthand up close how difficult it is to write a book. You've written that
many, that's incredible. - Oh yeah, it's a chapter of your life, it's a piece of you in the book. And when you're done, you just gotta regrow the
organs that you spent. Regrow your energy,
refuel your fuel tanks, regain energy, reestablish your existence as an entity. 'Cause you're putting so much of yourself in the book itself.
- Sure. This is why after every
episode of "StarTalk" when Chuck Nice and I say to Neil, "Hey, you wanna go out,
maybe have a glass of wine?" He's like, "No, I gotta go
home, I've things to do." Like write another book. (Neil laughs) "See you later, drunks." - The amount of interstitial time most people spend doing nothing is extraordinary.
- You're writing. - Yeah, so I'm writing,
that's exactly right. - Great use of time.
- Yeah. - You know who else
spent some time writing? (Neil laughs) Matt Herfield on Facebook.
- Next question. - [Ray] "Why are we
framing this as a race? "Is there an end goal that one
country could achieve first?" - Ooh, this was a
thoughtful question, oh man. - [Ray] It took them 30 seconds to write. (Neil laughs) - Race implies there's a
start point and an endpoint. And the race to the Moon that we won, but we didn't win the
race to space itself, Russia won that race. So many people say Mars is
the next obvious choice. You're not gonna go to Venus. It's hotter than a pizza
oven on Venus, by the way. So Mars would be the next obvious target. But I have a contrarian view here. I don't wanna call it contrarian. I have a, an unorthodox view here. I want to build the capacity to explore without reference to where you're going. So you have a warehouse of rockets. So what do you wanna do in space, Ray? - I wanna play baseball. - You wanna play baseball. So play baseball on the Moon. - Loved to.
- Okay, so. You should know that the
restaurants on the Moon, they have no atmosphere. (Neil laughs) You saw that coming.
- I did. - You saw it. (laughs) - But please tell me about the Italian suppositories on the Moon. (Neil and Ray laugh) - So you wanna play baseball. We might wanna do that on the Moon. So you go, what rockets do you need, how many people are you
gonna take with you? That's this vessel with
these many rockets. And you need to last this long so you need this food supply
and oxygen, that sort of thing. And then you go to the Moon and have fun. There's scientists that might wanna study the possibility of life on Mars, some other genesis on Mars. So they'll bring equipment with them and they wanna go there,
maybe they want robots. Maybe they'll stay in orbit and control robots down on the surface. So what I want is everybody's creativity to be empowered by our
capacity to explore space. And that way no one is saying
where the destination is. So in that sense it's actually not a race, it's, let's all go play in our backyard, and that backyard is the solar system. - Right, and well put. It's amazing to me. I always thought it's so interesting how everything has to be
framed as a competition. - Well, where we're human, and there are people who
rise to higher heights when they compete. When I first started
watching the Olympics, I thought to myself, why is it that you can set a
world record in the Olympics? Why didn't you set the
world record a week ago? It's you, you're the same person, how different are you
this week than last week or than a month ago? Why did you set a world? Because the competition,
the moment, the urge, the pageantry, all comes together and creates a will, a force, almost another force of nature
operating on your ambitions. - But it also creates a sense of pressure that maybe someone can
run the fastest time ever if he didn't feel as pressured. For example, some people
can only sing in the shower. They can't sing on stage,
they're great in the shower-- - Well, I sing really good in the shower, and I could sing on stage
but no one would want me to. (Ray and Neil laugh) - Do you wanna do the remake
of "Jesus Christ Superstar"? - Yeah, "Jesus Christ Superstar"
is my favorite musical. And I saw it in 1971. With an original cast
including Ben Vereen as Judas. - [Ray] Wow, you saw it
when you were two years old. (Neil laughs)
- Yes. But why did you? Oh, yeah, so I don't
have a voice that's good, I don't have a good singing voice other than I just sing in the shower. - Right, but there's some people who sound incredible in the shower and would be good in
front of a live audience, so I'm sure there's people that
participate in the Olympics who maybe aren't, maybe they could've
broken the world record just sort of on their own time. Like on a random Sunday they
get up, feel kind of relaxed-- - So we need an Olympics with
no cameras and no audience. - No cameras, no audience, no fans there. Sure, exactly. It's called the Home Olympics. - The Home Olympics. All right, we'll see how that one plays. So yeah, competition drives us. So does the urge to gain wealth and power. So that's driven all the greatest projects that humans have ever done in
the history of civilization. Greatest in terms of what
fraction of a society's intellectual, physical
and financial capital was invested in it. So when that's high, generally it's the praise of royalty, gods and royalty, it's economics, or it's war. And today you don't have praise of royalty triggering expensive projects the way we once we did in civilization. So that basically leaves war and money. I wished that were not true. I'm just simply reporting what has driven and
motivated people in the past. And so yes, competition, to be the first to get the economic return or to get the high ground, if there's a military motive to it, yeah. - [Ray] The Cheney effect. - Yeah, definitely. All right, next question. - All right, next question is from Pedro Semedio on Facebook. Pedro asks, "Are there any
international ethics or rules "for space exploration? "Let's suppose for example than Chang'e 4 "had a problem when landing." - This is the Chinese mission that landed on the back side of the Moon. - Yes.
- Yes, okay. - The backside or dark side? Or same thing? - No, no. - Two different things? - In spite of the 1973
album by Pink Floyd, "The Dark Side of the Moon," there's no dark side of the Moon. All sides of the Moon receive light. Yeah, a day in the Moon lasts a month. - Oh, no kidding.
- Yeah, yeah. So there's a far side to the Moon. That's why I said the back side. - I got you.
- Okay. - Not the underside. - But it's not a place
where the sun don't shine. (Ray laughs)
Okay. - So, okay, so in Chang'e 4, "If it had a problem when landing "and the potato seeds and silkworms "were spread over lunar soil, "were they to be punished somehow "for contaminating lunar
soil with terrestrial life?" Two different things. - So there are three things here. In 1976, there's something called the International Space Treaty. There's a much longer title
but you wanna shorten it, International Space Treaty. Signed by more than a 100 countries. And it's a code of conduct for space. Very kumbaya. They saw that the Cold
War was getting hotter and space was becoming a contested regime of international politics, and the UN said, "We gotta
do something about this." So in it, it says, if you're in trouble, even if we're enemies on the
ground, I gotta help you. I will bring you food or help you. It's very--
- Unifying. - Forward-looking and unifying. It's beautiful. My cynical skepticism is, if you can actually
pull that off in space, why don't you pull that off
down here on Earth? (laughs) Why is space different? You're humans and we're human. We kill each other from limited resources, we kill each other 'cause
your skin color is different, 'cause you worship a different god, 'cause you live on a different
side of a line on the sand. Why do we think, and if you can't accomplish it
up there, let's do that here? Let that be evidence that
you could do it in space. That's my cynical side of it. But, so we have that. - But you're right. I mean, you are right. We don't allow greed on rocket ships. - I know. (laughs) In addition, NASA has a branch of itself called Planetary Protection Office. And this protects contamination
in destination places of Earth life. And it protects Earth life from
what could be a contaminant brought back from space. And there are regulations about that and what level of
contamination and sterilization is allowed for different kinds of objects. So Europa, that one has the
highest chance of having life. So you want the most
steril objects going there to minimize the risk of contamination. The Moon itself is kind of sterile. We're not worried about
contaminating life that's there. Because it's got no atmosphere, the ultraviolet light
which is hostile to life, the molecules of life, just breaks apart the molecules. There's asteroids hitting all the time. So we're not worried that if
you go to the Moon and sneeze, you're gonna contaminate
a future experiment that we're conducting. So there's a lot written on it, but no, nobody gets punished. You look bad on an international stage but there's no punishment. It's no go back three spaces. - So you're saying China
will not be penalized for bringing 50 children on that mission so they can make sneakers on the Moon? (Neil breathes deeply) Too soon? (Neil laughs) - How did seeds breaking
open to the thing? (Neil and Ray laugh) That'd be very costly. - It'd be very costly. - And child labor historically
had been through-- - There's no child labor laws on the Moon. - On the Moon. Yeah, so that's another question. What is a crime in a place
that's not within a municipality? - Correct.
- Right, right. And don't get me started. Like if an alien more
intelligent than you lands and you kill it, is that murder? There's a whole thing, there's
a whole legal frontier here. - Well, you could argue
he reached for his-- - He? It's a male?
- Or she, or it. Yeah, I don't know why I
made it male, you're right. - You totally made it a male. - That's terrible. The alien reached for its-- - Reached for something.
- A phaser. (Neil laughs) I like that I have the alien
who's from 1960s television. - That's a 1964 alien. Yeah, so there's a whole frontier there, and that's a great question. But no, there's no penalties other than maybe we won't
invite you on our next mission. That's probably penalty enough. - That's a big penalty. - We gotta take a break. "StarTalk: Cosmic Queries,"
the next space race edition. We're back. "Cosmic Queries." This is the next space race edition. And I have a newbie as
my co-host, Ray Ellin. Ray.
- Hey! (Neil laughs) - He's just a newbie as my co-host but he's been in the comedy scene forever. And in fact you have your own comedy, like Ray's Comedy Club. - I have it on the island of Aruba. - That's crazy, dude!
- Aruba's Ray's Comedy Club. - When are you flying us all down? The whole "StarTalk" crew.
- Oh, that'd be fun. I'm heading down tomorrow and I expect everybody to
be joining me March 1st. - In Aruba.
- In Aruba. - Very cool. Maybe we'll go on a cruise
and that's a port of call. - Sure, that'd be great, that would work. I love it. I love it, I'm bringing you
up on stage if you come down. - (chuckles) So bring
me some questions here. - Okay. This is--
- "Cosmic Queries." - "Cosmic Queries." This is from Woody from
Adelaide, Australia. "What is the goal line for
scoring in the new space race? "Last time it was boots on the Moon. "A badass station on Mars would be cool." - That's a great question. I can't speak for everyone, but I can definitely list certain things that have not been accomplished yet. So, if you go to the
Moon and set up a colony, whether it's a permanent colony or a place that you visit seasonally, you wanna be able to use local resources to make stuff. And in NASA abbreviation lingo it's ISRU. In situ resource utilization. So it's better discussed
with regards to Mars. You go to Mars, are you
bringing all the water with you that you'll ever need? No, that's kinda stupid. If you're driving to Los Angeles, you don't bring all the water you need. You're gonna stop places
and pick up some water. And you refuel your tank. You're not gonna go with one fuel tank. It's gotta be bigger 'cause you gotta make it to Los Angeles. No, there are filling
stations along the way. So one goal is that space becomes, space itself becomes a
self-supporting commodity, if you will. So you don't need a huge rocket, you need a half-sized rocket
and you refuel halfway there. You don't need all the water
you're ever gonna drink. Get to Mars, sift the water
out from beneath the soil, beneath the surface, melt that and now you have water. Oh, by the way, water also
serves as rocket fuel. Build a factory, separate the
two molecules, the two atoms. What are they in water? What's the molecular form of water? - Hydrogen and oxygen.
- Thank you. H2O. - Yeah.
- Yeah. Yeah, H2O. - Sometimes when you ask me a question, I think you're trying to trick me. - No! I'm not a trick question guy, no. - Not a trickster.
- No. I ask very simple questions. - Well, thank goodness for that. - (laughs) Okay. So, H2O, if you separate those two atoms, and put them in separate liquified tanks. So liquified hydrogen, liquified. Very cold. You cool it down, it liquefies. And then have a nozzle that connects them, it's a highly exothermic reaction. There's endothermic, means the reaction
absorbs energy around it. Exothermic means it releases energy. You bring hydrogen oxygen
together, it's rocket fuel. So you can have water
there that you can drink, water that can serve as a, as rocket fuel, so then you don't have to bring it. Okay, well, how about food? Well, Mark Watney solved that one. He grew potatoes. You gotta go with something first. Figure that out, whether
it's gonna be green houses, this sort of thing. So one of the goal lines
or high bars for us is in situ resource utilization. And now that we have 3D printers, if something breaks, I need a knot, a bolt,
a fan blade, print it. Send in the CAD. Load up the CAD from Earth. The computer-assisted design. Load it from Earth. 'Cause I'm not gonna design it on Mars, I don't have that talent. Get somebody to design it. Oh, here's that new part you need. - Or just bring the designer with you. - No, they wouldn't have to. - You just bring the machine. - Yeah, there's a time
delay of like 20 minutes but that's fine. - What about long
distance energy transfer? Is that something that we're sort of? - You mean, oh well, no, our rockets, we're still using chemical
fuels in our rockets. You know what we need? Warp drives. (Neil and Ray laugh) Warp drives. - We need phasers and warp drives. - Phasers and warp drives. And we don't have flying cars yet but we need the warp
drives like real soon. Then you can cross the galaxy
during the TV commercial. Otherwise you're dead. The time it takes to travel
star to star is incommensurate with the life expectancy
of human physiology. - Is that right?
- Yeah. So going the fastest we've
ever gone, sent anything, if I aim for Alpha Century,
the nearest star to the Sun, ask me how long it takes? - How long does it take? - I mean, depending.
(Ray laughs) If there's tail winds. (Ray and Neil laugh) With a tail wind, 50,000 years. - Wow. I find that, I find that-- - It's sad. - I was gonna say, I find that depressing. - It's sad.
- It's very depressing. - So you're not going to Alpha Century. - I'm not going to Queens. What are we talking about here? (Neil laughs) Alpha Century. - And then you say, would
you want a generation ship? Are you gonna commit future generations to live out their entire lives just to make more babies on a ship so that some generation, a thousand generations down lands, enters the space of a, the sector where you
have the nearest star? This is not sensible. - [Ray] Yeah, it's really
not practical at all. - So, we need warp drive. - [Ray] We need warp drives, yeah. Can you work on that, please?
- Yeah, I'll work on it. - I've got people, I've got men. Okay, how about this, this is nice. This is from Umma Claire on Instagram. She said, "Hi, my name is Umma Claire. "My family and I always listen
to you on our way to school. "I certainly can't wait
to hear this episode. "Of all the countries
likely to be involved "in the new space race, "which is the closest to
bringing people to Mars?" - Ooh. - "Calculations and testing wise." - Ooh. - Good question, Umma. - Nobody is close to doing that now, but when China says
they wanna do something, in space or technologically,
they just do it, 'cause they have that
power over their resources in ways that democracies don't. We have to kinda all agree,
the population has to agree. Not so in China. China just decides as a country,
this is our next mission. - [Ray] We're doing it, we're doing it. - We're doing it, we're doing it, right. So all they have to do is say, "We're gonna put a Tycon
on Mars or orbit Mars," and then they'll just do it in the timeframe established for it. So I have no doubt that
that resolve is real, even though it's not a
stated goal at this moment. Of course, Elon Musk, it's a stated goal, he wants to put people on Mars. But there's no business case for that. He could do it as a one-off. He could get together with Jeff Bezos and get the multi-billionaires and say, "Let's put somebody on Mars." But if you were an
investor in that company, like I said, it's a short meeting. It's, so, what are you gonna do, Elon? "I'm gonna put humans on Mars." How much does it cost? "A trillion dollars, I don't know. "Probably more." Is it dangerous? "Yes." Will people die? "Probably." What's my return on investment? "Nothing." That's a five-minute meeting. I say this all the time. That's a five-minute meeting. So unless we discover oil
on Mars, (laughs) diamonds. But China could do it for no other reason but that they wanna do it. 'Cause if you're not a
completely free society, then you just decide to do it. Like the pharaoh said, "Make
me the biggest tombstone ever," and so they made pyramids. They just do it 'cause it's commanded. - We should spread a rumor
that there's oil on Mars. - No, no, spread a rumor that China wants to build military bases on Mars. - Ooh.
- Ooh. They just have to leak a fake memo and have the CIA discover it. Fake it, just do it, and
then we're going to Mars. - That's a great premise for a movie. - For a movie, oh yeah.
- I love it. That's the next Will Smith movie. (Neil laughs) - Yeah, so. Here's a scenario that I can imagine. China builds up their interest in Mars and they wanna send people. Even if they wanna do it peacefully. Forget war, we'll do it peacefully. But we'll still get a
little bit spooked by that. We'll react. We'll say, "We're going to Mars." Oh, NASA doesn't have
a spaceship to do so. We have one that kinda works but... Does anyone else have a spaceship? And Elon raises his hand. "I've got one right
here in the warehouse." So, then. - Right here next to the
pool and the tennis court. - So we end up using an Elon spaceship that he diligently built, researched, designed, and built, and that's good, but that's not Elon landing on Mars. That's the American tax
payer landing on Mars. That's the difference. - So it's no longer privatized. - It's not a business model
'cause we're doing it. - Yeah. - There it is. - Thanks Umma. - All right, we gotta take a break. When we come back, more
of the next space race on "StarTalk: Cosmic Queries" edition. We're back on "StarTalk:
Cosmic Queries" edition. the next space race is the subject. And I've got Ray Ellin with me. - Hello Neil. - Ray, you have a TV show
now on Comedy Central? - Yeah.
- That's very cool. - Yeah, man, it's very exciting. - 'Cause you're all calm
and cool here in my office but you're a bad ass outside of the. - I'm a very humble dude. (Neil laughs) It's called "This Week
at the Comedy Cellar." It's on Comedy Central Friday nights. We just wrapped season one. Season two should be
starting up probably-- - This week, so it's like "John
Oliver This Week Tonight"? - Yes.
- A review of the? - It's a weekly topical standup show. We have about 20 different
comics come on every episode. - Every episode?
- Yeah, every episode. We have a great roster of comedians. - Nice, oh, I'll check it. How does a listener find you? - Go to ComedyCentral.com and you can watch every episode
that's been archived there. - Nice, nice. All right, good. See, I thought we were your only gig, and now I'm happy and sad. (Neil laughs)
- Well, you know what, Neil? You are my favorite gig. - Oh, there we go, that makes up for it. - Comedy Central is not
blasting me into space. (Neil laugh) I don't know if you will, but. - All right, what questions you've got? - All right, here we go. This is from Almatastar from Instagram. "When will the Space Force
start cleaning up space, "or is there another program "that's already working on space cleaning? "Saludos de Puerto Rico." Greetings from Puerto Rico. - Space Force. So a lot of talk about Space Force 'cause Trump said he wants a Space Force. But let me just say unequivocally that just because Trump mentioned it does not mean it's a crazy idea. Just for the Trump naysayers out there. Just want, just-- - The moment they hear that word Trump, they immediately just. - Yeah, they can't listen to anything that comes out of his mouth. Space Force is... - You think it's practical? Reasonable? - I don't care, really, but I can tell you the benefits of it. It will focus attention that
is already allocated to space within the Air Force. The Air Force has the
United States Space Command. The Air Force has been
thinking about space ever since we've had access to space. And you know who else
is thinking about space? The CIA and other reconnaissance agencies. Because space is the high ground. So when you think of Space Force and you wanna think of space war, the urge is "Star Wars" with
lasers and weapons and phasers. (Neil laughs)
- So, phasers. - You need the photon torpedoes. But it turns out it's very impractical to attack Earth targets from space, 'cause you're moving 18,000
miles an hour in orbit and that's just really fast. To then aim and do something on Earth? It's just. When we can send an
intercontinental ballistic missile and hit a target any place
on Earth within 45 minutes, to say, oh we gotta wait until
the satellite is in position. No, no, you just throw it. So we already know how to kill each other from surface-based weaponry. We already know that, so
space is not improving that. Quote improving that. So, space is a place for reconnaissance. And by the way, the Air Force, no one questions why do
we have an Air Force. They used to be a branch of the Army. It was the Army Air Force throughout the whole Second World War. - But the notion of Space
Force to be sort of-- - But let me (mumbles)! - Oh, my bad, my bad!
- Telling you! - Yeah, I got you. - The engineer that fixes the tank, is that the same engineer that fixes the airfoil on an airplane? No. The grunt on the ground
who's carrying the weapon, is that the same soldier training as the pilot of the jet fighter? No. So you branch off Air Force from the Army. And no one is really questioning that, the value of that. So to branch off Space
Force from the Air Force, why are you gonna have an issue with that? And, by the way, if you're gonna do that, let's add priorities to whatever it is they were doing before. And one of them would
be let's clean up space. Space debris.
- Space litter. - Oh, it's litter. I think that's why we haven't
been visited by aliens. - Too many balloons up there? - No, no, they just looked at it and said, "You guys are nasty." - "You're slobs."
- "You're just slobs." - "You dirty filthy people."
- "You dirty, filthy." So NASA tracks space debris so that when it launch the next thing, they don't slam into it. The Space Station has
limited maneuverability power in case something is headed its way. So, yeah. Another one of what I'd want them to do is deflect the asteroids. I don't wanna be like the
dinosaurs, going extinct. 'Cause we have a space program
and the dinosaurs didn't. Dinosaurs, if they had a space program, no, they didn't.
- I didn't know that. - I'm sorry I didn't tell you
that before the show. (laughs) - I thought the pterodactyls had a-- - Oh, they would lead, (laughs) they're the flying ones, right? - Yeah, they're leading the Space Force. - Yeah. - They're the front man.
- They're the front man. Plus, the badass one was Rodan from, the supersonic pterodactyl. - Supersonic.
- Yeah, definitely. So, what am I saying? Yeah, I think you'd want
to add to their portfolio. - But wouldn't Space Force sort of be, because it's all of space, outer space, wouldn't that need to be an
international organization? - You know, that's a
really good, that's good. That's like saying the air
molecules above this country belong to the United States. - Correct. - That's kind of stupid, no.
- It's insane. - The air moves, it's insane, right. You can say, I don't want
you over this country, but to declare ownership of air, when air travels around the world? Yeah, it's that kinda thing. "I own space." No, you don't. You can't own space. - I'd like to dispute air rights on top of my apartment building. (Neil laughs) (mumbles) the atmosphere
all over the world. - So yeah, ownership is a thing. So I think that any
discussion about ownership is about who owns the
Moon, who owns an asteroid. You go to an asteroid to
mine its natural resources, do you own it? Or who owns it? - Finder's keepers, man. (Neil laughs) No, but it's a great point. That's like saying, do we own the Moon? We put a flag on the
Moon, the Moon's ours. It's US light. - Yeah, we didn't put
the UN flag on the Moon. - We put the US flag so it's US light. It's the United States, it's
our, you know what I'm saying. Little island, sort of speak. And by the way, you cannot see the flag, the flag that Neil
Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planted on the Moon, you cannot see that with any, the Hubble Telescope can't capture that? - It's too small to resolve
with ground-based telescopes or the size of telescopes
that are in orbit. But you can see the flag from satellites that orbit the Moon. So we have imagining, you
can see the Rover tracks, it's kinda cool. - Oh, that's cool, that's awesome. - You know what they got
wrong in, what movie was that? Was it--
- "Interstellar"? - No, no. A "Transformers." I think it was one of the
"Transformers" movies. They show one of their
craft passing by the Moon and you see the landing spot
for the Apollo astronauts but it still has the limb on it. - [Ray] Oh, is that right? - Yeah, 'cause that departed from it, it just has the spidery leg at the bottom. Yeah, so they left the whole thing 'cause you wouldn't
recognize it as anything if it's just a platform. - Did you retweet that at some point? - No, it was a little obscure. - Well, you have too many
"Game of Thrones" tweets to get through, so you know.
(Neil laughs) - Yeah, it just looks so naked to just have the base and these four legs, so they left the whole module there that the astronauts occupied just so it looks like a landing spot. - Is it understood that
if China were to land right where we have
landed, the US had landed, that you're not supposed
to tamper with any of that? The flag, the-- - When has the history of human conduct fulfilled anything that was
supposed to be anything? - Yeah. - Yeah, if they went up
and like broke the flag. - Technical foul! (Neil laughs) - 15 yard penalty. So, yeah. That would be, I don't wanna
say it was an act of war, I would say it would be a
profound act of disrespect and there would probably be repercussions. - [Ray] Certainly with
this administration. - Disrespect. Specially since--
- There'd be a Moon tariff. - (laughs) Specially since, even though we planted an American flag, Neil Armstrong laid a plaque that said, "We come in peace "for all mankind." It didn't say, "We come for
America, for Americans." And I don't know any act of exploration where upon planting a flag, the next words uttered were, "We come in peace for
everyone, all of humanity." The history of that exercise, specially Europeans leaving Europe, is, "I put a flag here, now we own it. "And we have warships to
back up that statement." No matter who you find living there. So it was a fundamentally different act. And so we'll see what
the future of this is. I don't know. Got time for a couple more,
give me a couple more. - Alexis Wardrole, Instagram. "Alexis from Hong Kong here. "When do you think we'll start sending "world leaders into space? "And if we could do that
now, who would you send?" - Ooh. Didn't I do this on another episode? I can't do it too often but
I'm gonna do it again now. Okay, you ready for this? Ray, you're not ready. Are you ready?
- I'm ready. I am so ready for this! - I don't feel--
- Hold on a second. (Neil laughs)
Can you feel that? I'm ready!
- You're feeling it, okay. You're ready? Which world leader should
we send into space? Okay, so, first, we should send all the
flat-earthers into space. - [Ray] Okay. (laughs) - I think they wanted that anyway. - So, Kyrie Irving, not a
world leader but he can go. - Just so they can orbit the Earth and see that Earth is a sphere. And then you bring them back
and say, "You happy now?" - Oh, for educational needs. - Yeah, I'm an educator, dude.
- That's true. - I'm not trying to get rid of 'em, I trying to help 'em out. - Get rid of them.
- No. - One of the dumb ideas
you have, get out of here! - You demonstrate the roundness of Earth. Okay. Next, you send all world leaders. It'll be like a PeopleMover van. No, it'd have to be bigger. How many world, there are
hundreds of world leaders. There's hundreds, okay. You ready? - [Ray] Thousands if
you count the islands. - This is a quote. Exactly. But leaders of established nations is a hundred and something. How many countries are there? - [Ray] I think it's 174? - Yeah, it's between
one and 200 countries. We've got our crack team
researching this now. - 195.
- How much? - 195.
- Yeah, 195. So 200 countries, so 200 world leaders. - Okay.
- Okay, here we go. - Do they get a plus one? - (laughs) Okay, 400 world leaders. (Ray laughs) I'm gonna read a quote
from Edgar Mitchell. - Okay. - Apollo? - Three. (Neil laughs) - Apollo 14.
- 14. - Apollo 1 through 6 were scrapped after we lost the three
Apollo 1 astronauts. So the next Apollo was Apollo 7. - That's my question again. (Neil laughs) - Okay, so, here we go. "You develop an instant
global consciousness, "a people orientation, "an intense dissatisfaction
with the state of the world, "and a compulsion to
do something about it. "From out there on the Moon, "international politics look so petty. "You want to grab a politician
by the scruff of the neck "and drag him a 1/4
million miles out and say, "'Look at that, you son of a bitch.'" - That's great. - Ooh. - That's juicy.
- Juicy. Just give a cosmic
perspective reality check to every politician and then bring them back down to Earth. I think they'll be changed. That's what the universe can do to you. When you see Earth as only
nature can present it to you, with oceans and land and clouds, no color-coded national boundaries, none of the usual trappings of who owns what part of
what section of the world, it's just a planet. Our life-giving planet. If you can't make peace on that planet with fellow human beings, you don't deserve the power
that science has given you to serve as a shepherd of our future survival on this planet. You don't deserve it. You should just go somewhere else. Put people in power who
understand what Earth is, what it means to us and
all other life on Earth and what steps they
need to take to cherish this place that we have
borrowed from our descendants. - I think that would be a
great unifying experience, I think. If you could do that. If you could send those
200 people up together. I really think it would. - After you send out the flat-earthers. (Neil laughs)
- Yeah. I actually would like
to become a flat-earther just so I can get that trip.
- Just to get the first trip. - That's a nice trip. It's far better than getting
a freebie to Cape Cod. - So Ray, we gotta wrap, we
gotta call it quits here. - Well, before we go I
just want everyone to know I came across Neil's
book, "Accessory to War." - Well, you're in my office
so the book is there. - Well, that's how I came across it. I was snooping around his office and in between all the bobbleheads of him and all the "Star Wars" Campbell Soups that he has up there on the shelf. - But this one is Primordial Soup. Let's get your soup straight here. - Wait, what? - Primordial Soup.
(Ray laughs) - On that self over there you have a-- - Oh those are "Star Wars"
Campbell Soups, yeah, yeah, yeah. - But this is "Accessory to
War: The Unspoken Alliance "Between Astrophysics and the Military." This is a book you wrote a few months ago? - It came out, yeah, last September. I co-author it with Avis Lang. It's like 500 pages. So my book before that was "Astrophysics for People in a Hurry." This is astrophysics for
people not in a hurry. Just make that clear. - The other book, I read on a subway ride. This one's gonna get me a
subway ride with four stops. It's gonna take me a
little more extra time. But, again-- - But thanks for the
plug, thanks for the plug. It's another labor of love. It's the history, 'cause
science is not untouched by war, and the founding forward that enable it, that empower it, that feed it. And so this is just a
candid review and assessment of what that relationship has been between the history of
astrophysics and war itself. - I'm excited to try to tackle this. You are the most prolific
non-comedian I've ever met. (Neil laughs) There's some comics I know
who just write endlessly. And of all the non-comics,
this is unbelievable. 15 books. - There's a new word
for being a non-comic, it's called non-comic. (laughs) - A civilian.
- A civilian. We gotta go. Ray, thanks for doing this!
- Thanks man. A lot of fun. - Okay, we're gonna get you back again. - Love it. - And the invitation to Aruba stands. - Wide open.
- All right. You've been listening to,
possibly even watching, this space race episode of "StarTalk." And I've been your host,
Neil deGrasse Tyson. And as always, I bid
you to keep looking up. (upbeat music)
