Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye Catch Up | StarTalk Radio

So planets become more interesting, moons become places to go and revisit, but there was a whole other goal, and that was the search for intelligent life in the universe.

It still is. Oh man. It is very reasonable that maybe in my lifetime, but in your kid's lifetime, somebody's gonna find evidence of life on another world. And because if we found such a signal, it would, dare I say it,

change the world. The day we discover life will signal a change in the human condition that we cannot foresee or imagine.

That's pretty good.

This is Star Talk. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. And today I've got an exclusive one-on-one conversation reserved for only those people who are not only important, but are also a friend of mine. We got with me in studio Bill Nye. Greetings, Doctor. How you doing, man? Got a bow tie on and everything. You're just completely that guy.

I am that guy.

The science guy.

What you see is what you get.

And did you tie your own bow tie today?

Yeah. You imagine, Bill Nye wears clip on tie.

That would be a funny skit.

Bill Nye decided to end his career and lose respect from all his fans.

Just, I want you to know, if I ever see anybody with a bow tie, I ask them if it's real, and if they say not, which is about two-thirds of people, I say, I'm going to tell Bill Nye on you. And then they shudder, because they...

They can wear a clip-on bow tie, that's fine. I mean, I just think it's not in the, as we say, the spirit of the game.

I flew my ass out here to Los Angeles We are now in your office of the Planetary Society Pasadena, California The same town where this society was birthed. A true fact, not a false fact. Give me a fast birther story on this.

So Carl Sagan had been very influential in getting the Viking landing on Mars and the 2 Voyager spacecraft launched.

And just for historical completeness, there were 2 missions of Viking lander and a Viking orbiter. Yes. So it could photograph the surface.

Yes. Amazing, really amazing visionary ideas. And so he noticed that public interest in space exploration, especially planetary exploration, was very high. But government support of it was waning. And he had this big idea for a solar sail spacecraft.

This is the 1970s now.

1976. Yeah. Yeah. And the disco era. And that was set aside for more human missions, including the famous handshake in space so that The Soviet Union and the United States would have no more conflict, and that worked out great.

It was an Apollo capsule in orbit around Earth, a Soyuz capsule, and they were configured so that their collars could join, and they'd open the hatch, and they're all weightless, So they're just floating through, and they would shake hands. And I was told that the Americans were trained to only speak Russian, and the Russians were trained to only speak English.

And US astronauts still speak Russian. It's still a thing they do. And we flew on Soyuz rockets for a zillion years. All that inclusive. Bruce Murray, who was head of the Jet Propulsion Lab during these famous missions, Viking and Voyager.

Jet Propulsion Lab right here in Pasadena.

Yes, right at the fiber up the street. And then Lou Friedman, who was an orbital mechanics guy.

Engineer. Yes, at

both a PhD, which you like, they decided that there was enough interest in space exploration that they could start the Planetary Society.

Enough grassroots interest.

Grassroots. So we had the Planetary Society had tens of thousands of members by the end of, pick a number, 1982. It was started in the winter of 79, 1980. I'm a charter member.

Now, I remember getting the letter. And I was not, I'll be frank with you, I was not moved by the letter Because if I remember correctly it says dear Citizen of planet Earth and I said, that's not very special to me.

What? What did you want? Citizen of New York.

I don't know, dear Neil. I mean,

I don't know.

Something a little more personal

than dear citizen of planet Earth.

It was the state of the art. Anyway, the Planetary Society's been around now. We'll have our 45th anniversary this spring. And what we do is promote planetary exploration. And just notably, just last week as we're recording this, the Europa Clipper mission left for the moon of Jupiter with twice as much ocean water as Earth. And that is in part, let's say entirely, because of the Planetary Society where our members, 40, 000 people around the world think space exploration of planets is very important, wrote letters and emails to US Congress especially, got this mission funded 11 years ago, and now it's flying.

And it was delayed because of Hurricane Milton. Hurricane Milton. You know, and I wanted to have a little sort of romantic nostalgia for the 1969 film Marooned. Do you remember that?

Yeah, with O.J. Simpson.

No, that's a different, no, he

was not in that 1.

What's that 1?

0,

you're getting your movies mixed up. That was Capricorn 5.

Capricorn 5.

Okay. Capricorn 5 or Capricorn 1.

0, maybe Capricorn 1.

Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, this Maroon where they, retro rockets don't fire.

And they can't get out of orbit. Yeah. Right. And, but they have a rescue ship to go rescue them, but they can't launch because a hurricane is coming through

Cape Canaveral. Those were the days.

Okay, and I remember as a kid, it was like, hurricane, that's pretty artificial.

Well, yeah, storytelling.

Yeah, it's Florida. This was not a weird fact to put into your story. And so then some clever meteorologist said, hey, Neil, the eye of the hurricane is going to go over the launch pad.

Have you seen, have you ever been in an eye of a hurricane?

I'm told it's really eerie.

It's weird. Yeah, I was at Hurricane Agnes in the early 1970s, came over, and all of a sudden it's a clear sky for

a little while. And I'm told there are birds that get trapped inside of the eye of the hurricane, like tropical birds that end up thousands of miles away from you. It would have been cool had they launched Europa Clipper in the eye of the hurricane.

That would have been a risky set of businesses, because the-

The window is big enough, so They just delayed it a week.

Well, not just that. Just keep in mind, everybody, humans have to be there to launch the thing. Like, people have to go home. They have to secure. They've got to screw plywood to the windows of their house. And then they have to come back to the cape to be ready to push the button and look at all the fuel lines and liquid oxygen connections and all that. That there's a lot more to it. When we talk about spacecraft, we remind everybody there are a tremendous number of assets and investments in the infrastructure on the ground

back to you. Has the mission statement changed over the decades?

Very little, but it's succinct now.

Okay.

We are the world's largest independent space interest organization advancing space science and exploration so that citizens of Earth will be empowered to know the cosmos and our place within it.

That's really catchy.

Well here's what it is, it's succinct. We empower citizens.

I agree, I'm just saying it's like it doesn't roll off the tongue.

Well it does if you're the CEO yeah before the elevator doors close.

You are CEO and president.

No no there's a bylaw rule I'm not president. What

are you?

We have a separate I'm CEO.

Just CEO? Yeah. I thought you were important.

Exactly. So the president is an unpaid position.

Did not know that.

Yeah, that's a Great tradition here at

a nonprofit in California. You used to be president. I used to be vice president.

Vice president. Okay

I was equally unpaid as vice president. And so the board of directors is committed. And just notice, everybody, our board is the real deal bunch of people. Our president's Bethy Ellman. Dr. Ellman is a professor at Caltech. She has a couple missions that she's a principal investigator, a PI on. And our vice president, Heidi Hamel, is 1 of the 20 most influential women astronomers in history. Brittany Schmidt is driving around submarines under the ice in Antarctica, prepared to go under the ice on Europa and Titan, or Enceladus I mean, I was joking, Enceladus.

1 of the moons of Saturn. Another icy moon.

Icy moon. And so everybody, if you have ocean water for 4 and a half billion years. Is there something alive?

That happened here on Earth. Yeah. 1 of the defining missions of the 1970s was the Voyager.

Oh, it still defines people. Here's the...

Voyager.

I don't know if it's wide enough to see, but there's a replica of the record.

Uh-huh. So this defined a generation of hope for our future space exploration. And Carl Sagan was particularly visible and known over that time. Yes. Has it changed over the decades? And I ask that because if I remember correctly, because I used to serve on the board of the Planetary Society and I cherish those years because it's where I met you. And it's where I met Andrewian, Rolf Sagan's widow. Yes. I did not know either. I might've met her once or something, but we didn't know each other until we were both on the board. So that was, these are important connections to be made.

This is what we do. We connect people with the passion, beauty, and joy, the PB&J.

PB&J, loving it. That's a, that's a Bill Nye-ism, PB&J.

Yeah, But it's really caught on in the science education.

This is, that's how-

But now, all that aside, peanut butter and jelly used to be a very common lunch treat.

I remembered there was a resistance to people in space, relative to robots. And some of that might have just been the sphere of influence of Carl, Carl Sagan, where he, he just, who's a robot guy.

From an engineering or scientific or science fiction critic of Astrophysical Observer. At which

I count myself among the ranks of.

Yes, premier Astrophysical Observer. Note well, you can't get people to Europa. It's too flippin' far away and too cold and there's nowhere to walk and everybody's gonna die.

So you build the spacecraft

to go there as our proxies that we design the instruments to be as human to give us both a scientific perspective and a human perspective.

But in the day, robots were nothing compared to today. In the day, I mean, 50 years ago. 50 years ago. Compare robots then to today. Today, I'm walking down the street in LA, there's a car with no driver.

Yes, no driver.

You're making left turns. Yeah, turn it going straight.

You may see the bumper sticker here in California on the Tesla that says I'm probably not driving.

It's pretty charming.