StarTalk with Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson reunite, this week on Planetary Radio. I'm Sarah Al-Ahmad of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. What happens when you put a beloved science educator in a room with one of the greatest astrophysicist communicators in history? Friendship, that's what.

This week, we share part of the Planetary Society's CEO Bill Nye's conversation with Neil deGrasse Tyson, the director of Hidden Planetarium and co-host of StarTalk, the podcast where science, pop culture, and comedy collide. Then we'll get an update on the Trump administration's proposed pick for the next NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman. Our chief of space policy, Casey Dreyer, and our director of government relations, Jack Carelli, will give you the details. ♪

Then Bruce Betts will join us for What's Up and a new random space fact. If you love Planetary Radio and want to stay informed about the latest space discoveries, make sure you hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcasting platform. By subscribing, you'll never miss an episode filled with new and awe-inspiring ways to know the cosmos and our place within it. A couple of months ago in October, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson and the StarTalk podcast crew joined our team at Planetary Society HQ in Pasadena, California.

Neil is the co-host of StarTalk and the director of Hidden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. You may also have seen Neil on TV over the years, especially if you're a fan of our co-founder Carl Sagan's 1980 series, Cosmos, A Personal Voyage. Neil hosted that show's successors, Cosmos, A Spacetime Odyssey, and Cosmos, Possible Worlds. If you're curious about how that happened, you can learn more about Neil's personal connection with Carl Sagan in the first show.

Star Talk is a podcast where Neil and his comic co-host discuss space, pop culture, and everything in between. There was also a spinoff TV version on National Geographic for a while. And as a bonus treat, the full video version of this conversation is going to be available on Star Talk's website and YouTube channel. Our CEO Bill Nye met Neil during Neil's time on the Planetary Society's Board of Directors. They've gotten into some science-y shenanigans over the years, but they haven't had the time to reunite in quite a while.

We take you now to Bill Nye's office, where Neil and Bill sit among the various science knickknacks, spacecraft models, and images to discuss the Planetary Society's 45-year legacy of advancing space science and exploration. 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. Can 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. Not? See what he did there? I say, I'm going to tell Bill Nye on you. And then they shudder because they.

They can wear a club on both sides. That's fine. I mean, I just think it's not in, as we say, the spirit of the game. 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. So give me a fast...

birther story on this. So Carl Sagan had been very influential in getting the Viking landing on Mars and the two Voyager spacecraft launched. And just for historical completeness, there were two missions of Viking lander and a Viking orbiter.

Yes. And 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. It's 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 opened the hatch and

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 U.S. astronauts still speak Russian. It's still a thing they do. So, and we flew on Soyuz rockets for a zillion years. All that inclusive. Right.

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, and...

They decided that there was enough interest in space exploration that they could start the Planetary Society. Enough grassroots interest. Grassroots. Yeah. 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.

Anyway, the Planetary Society has 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 are.

40,000 people around the world think space exploration of planets is very important. Wrote letters and emails to U.S. Congress especially. Got this mission funded 11 years ago, and now it's flying. And it was delayed because of Hurricane Milton. Hurricane Milton. 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 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. What are you? 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...

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 is 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 one 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 Enceladus. One of the moons of Saturn. Another icy moon. Icy moon. Yeah. And so everybody, if you have ocean water for four and a half billion years, is there something alive? That happened here on Earth. Yeah. One 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 of space exploration. And Carl Sagan was particularly visible...

Yes. I'm lucky you.

And it's where I met Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan's widow. Yes. I did not know either. I might have met her once or something, but we didn't know each other until we were both on the board. 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. I remember 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 just, who's a robot guy. From an engineering or scientific or science fiction critic of astrophysical observer. Which I count myself among the ranks of. Yes. Premier astrophysical observer. Yes.

Note, well, you can't get people to Europa. It's too flipping far away and too cold and there's nowhere to walk and everybody's going to die. So you build the spacecraft to go there as our proxies. We design the instruments 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. Yes, that's what I'm saying. What do you got here? So this is the Spirit Rover, a picture of the Spirit Rover. And the cameras. And it's solar panels. Yes, the cameras were set up to be, this is the expression, as high as a 10-year-old's eye.

So that you were, these cameras were put there so that humankind could imagine ourselves walking around, driving around on Mars and talking about the planetary side.

The lore that we promote, and I think you alluded to this earlier, is that Bruce Murray was a young guy in the 1960s, co-founder, working on the Mariner program. Mariner to Mars. Mars, which was the Ranger spacecraft repurposed to go. Ranger went to the moon to map the moon. And as a kid, I would be in class and we'd watch the moon come up. Yeah. Except it's in space, no sound.

Yeah, some of the Rangers crash landed. Yeah, on purpose, purposefully. And to see what the lunar surface was like up close. So I forgot all about Mariner because Mariner, I think, took the first pictures of Mars that revealed there were no canals. Yeah. And so this Bruce Murray gets credit when you're talking to us at the Planetary Society for being the guy who insisted that spacecraft have cameras.

Because people think scientists love pictures, but... Well, it depends on the picture. No, what I mean is there's much less science in a photo than the public is led to believe. Well... We get chart recorders. We get magnetic magnetometers. Geiger counters. Geiger counters. Magnetometers. Magnetometers. We got... Spectra. We got a lot of optical... Give me spectra over a photo any day. But if people get...

about how beautiful the universe is. It changed the world. Pictures from space changed the world. We all at some point must confess to ourselves that that is the fact. Confess your brains out. If we want to credit back to some of these founding fathers, I think Carl Sagan was the first scientist in his writings and in his appearances on television to put science

You, just a regular person. A regular person, citizen of Earth. You became a participant on that frontier. It was no longer, let them go do their thing and they'll report back later. No. Or spend some tax dollars on this. It probably doesn't have anything to do with you. Right, right, right. It all has something to do with you. Everything, you are part of this great process of discovery, this adventure. And Bruce Murray used to talk about the unknown horizon, right?

Why are you guys sending spacecraft out to these extraordinary distant places? What are you going to find? We don't know what we're going to find. That's why we're sending the spacecraft. I think it's Einstein that famously said, research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing. That sounds good. Yeah, yeah, that's completely it. And Isaac Asimov, science doesn't begin with a hypothesis. It begins with, oh, that's funny. Oh, no, you got that wrong. Oh, help me out. Yeah, he said, very few scientific discoveries, if any, ever begin with,

Eureka. It's, that's funny. That's funny. So we explore the planets. So another thing I credit the Planetary Society for and its philosophies and its outlook is turning objects in space into worlds. Worlds is a great word. When you use the word world...

It's no longer a detached object from your imagination. It really gets you here. You got it, man. No, Neil, that's absolutely right. I don't know anyone else who, any other organization or worldview that made that such an important point. Right on, man. Another thing that I credit the enthusiasm of the Planetary Society for is...

When I was growing up, the moons of planets, like, why would anyone give a rat's ass? It's the moon. Look at the planet, not the moons. And then Voyager goes out there, gets pictures of the moons, and the moons are more interesting than the planets. There's a lot going on. A lot. And they're all different. Io, Europa, Ganymede. Our moon is like the least interesting moon in the solar system. 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 still is in the universe. Oh man.

And I'm remembering how big a part of that was in my couple of years when I served on the board. But then when I came off the board, you know, it's less tangible, right? Because we don't know if the aliens are out there and are they hearing, listening to us. So where is TPS, the Planetary Society, relative to the search for intelligence? Well, we've let that go to this SETI Institute. SETI Institute, of course. SETI Institute.

And they're based up in Northern California. Yeah, yeah. Right. And they're very well endowed and they chip away at this problem. They just got a boatload of money just recently. Well, I went with well endowed. You can go boatload of money. Spacecraft full of money. Yeah. And so they will carry on that research in their enabled best way possible.

And they have a whole suite of telescopes originally funded by Paul Allen. Paul Allen and the Allen Array. So these are telescopes that are sensitive to radio waves on the assumption that if anyone is going to talk to us, they're going to use radio waves because radios penetrate clouds. Carl Sagan was very well spoken about this, about this logical place.

where water molecules would not absorb radio waves, logical place, logical frequency, where radio waves would not be absorbed by water vapor. And so if an alien civilization... Because water vapor is across the universe as well. Hydrogen's everywhere. You could aim your intergalactic or interplanetary...

interstellar message to go through the water hole, as he called it. Very cool term. But all that aside, it is very reasonable that

Maybe in my lifetime, but in your kid's lifetime, somebody's going to find evidence of life on another world. And the logical places are going to be under the sands of Mars. Okay, but this would be microbial life. This is not. Yeah, but still it would change the world. Then you would say to Mr. Microbe, Ms. Microbe.

They, microbe, do you have DNA? Are you a whole nother different? I get that, but that wasn't what SETI was about. No, no, it's still not. Right. SETI finding microbes, that's not their thing. That's fine. Knock yourselves out. That's not their thing. Because if we found such a signal, it would, dare I say it,

Change the world. And so said the Institute keeps listening. We had an exhibit at the Hayden Planetarium before we rebuilt that was narrated by William Shatner and it was about the search for life. And I will, I remembered the quote cause I thought it was a brilliant sentence. And he said it in his sort of pause acting way. The day we discover life.

will signal a change in the human condition that we cannot foresee or imagine. That's pretty good. No, everybody, I say all the time, everybody will feel differently about being a living thing. Yes. Whether or not it's what we call intelligent. Oh yeah. It would transform biology. The logical question from the sands of Mars, there's another hypothesis that once life starts, you can't stop it.

So if life started on Mars, there's salty slush near the equator of Mars. We're kept almost warm by the sun. Are there microbes living under the sand? And if we found them, do they have DNA? To wit.

Was Mars hit with an impactor, which happens all the time. Long ago. Knocked a living thing on a rock off into space. It fell. Except in space, no sound. These would be microbes stowing away in the nooks and crannies. Trapped, stowing away. Land on Earth.

And you and I are descendants of Martians. That is an extraordinary hypothesis. I think you more so than me. Yeah, well, it's an extraordinary hypothesis, but if it proved to be true, it would change the world. And so it is worth... That would be panspermia. Panspermia. It's worth investigating. So in the Viking missions, famously, the rocks came back, those pictures, depicted the Martian sky as blue.

And the rocks were too pink. And it took them, I was at the 30th anniversary of this thing. And these guys were talking about, it took them about a day and a half to realize that the cameras had been calibrated on earth and the pictures needed to be recalibrated. So they found intuitively that if you look at the shadow, you can infer the color of the sky. So those of you out there haven't sat through this, go outside on a sunny day,

If you're in Ithaca, New York, where I went to college, there is a sunny day scheduled in the next 10 years. Yes. Then you make a shadow on something white, like my shirt would be good. And you'll see the shadow is gray to be sure, but it's also ever so slightly light blue.

And that's because the sun is not the only source of light here on earth's surface. The sky is a source of light. Nothing but orange skies on the other planet. Yeah. So on Mars, the sky is orange or salmon colored or what have you. And so they found that by looking at the shadow, they could infer the color of the sky. And then how much the colors of the rocks had been influenced on the camera by

on the images by the color of the sky. That's very clever. So what you're saying is, to summarize, whatever's going on in the shadow...

is not directly influenced by the sun. It's directly influenced, but it's not the only influence. No, no, sorry. You get an authentic background lighting from the rest of the sky. Yeah. Yeah. So the idea was to send this post, this stick, to Mars to cast a shadow. And I was in the meeting and I said, aren't there many, many things to cast a shadow? No, we need it to fall in something precisely calibrated or well-known colors or grayscale.

And so I was in the meeting. Now, my dad had the misfortune of being a prisoner of war in World War II for almost four years. And he told the story often of walking in Japan and China at first and then Japan at the end of the war. They got as Japanese influence shrunk. They got moved to the South Island of Japan for the last year of the war. But he would, by all accounts, stick a shovel handle in the.

soil and watch the shadow and reckon when it was lunchtime kind of thing.

And so he came back. That's right. So he wrote a book about sundials. He was the astronomy merit badge counselor. He made a sundial. That would be for the Boy Scouts. For the Boy Scouts. So I was in the meeting. They're going to send a metal stick to Mars to cast a shadow. So you have genetic proclivity. I'm just jumping out of my chair. You guys, we got to make that into a sundial. Okay. I'm glad you didn't put a shovel here. So they were all looking at me like, dude,

It's the space program. Bill, I see you're wearing a watch. No, come on. It'll be like people who speak Klingon, except it'll be real. Mars 2004, two worlds, one sun. So Lou Friedman, one of our founders, came up with that. We were having dinner. He said, one sun, two worlds. In a few seconds, we all went, oh, no, no, two worlds, one sun. That's really inspirational. Light, light.

Shadows on Mars are cast by the same life-giving star as shadows on Earth. Now, wait, wait, there's more. On the edge around the dial is a message to the future.

We built this instrument in 2003. It arrived here in 2004 to study the Martian environment and look for signs of water and life. And on the last of the four panels... I can't read this. What is it? Is it in Braille? What is it? It's in a younger person's font. Okay. That's what it is. It says, on the last of the four, it says, to those who visit here, we wish a safe journey and the joy of discovery.

And that's written in English because, of course, aliens read English. Well, English would... No, no, it's written for humans. So... Well, other humans who can arrive. Yeah, English is the language of aerospace, even now. And of aviation, too. Yeah, aviation, yeah. So it's optimistic.

People are going to be there and they're going to go up to that thing and look at it and think about the way we go up to the Plymouth rock, the way we go up to what have you. Yes. Right here. A mid a, a Michu Picchu. We go up and go, wow, that's an extraordinary thing. Humans before us did. And it's optimistic and it has the joy of discovery. And that has become PB and J cash me to enjoy J O D joy of discovery.

Tell me about political advocacy, because it's one thing to just celebrate it, but at some point, somebody's got to show up in Washington. This is what we do. Have you been asked to testify? Oh, heck yes. Uh-huh. So...

What we have been able to do is hire two guys who are just really into this and are excellent at it. So we have one guy who studies policy. It sounds like you're talking about lobbyists. No. So a lobbyist is a paid person and he has to have a license and this and that. We are advocates.

So what we do is get our members, we send letters and emails to members of Congress and the Senate advocating for space missions that we believe are in the best interest of humankind, in the best interest of making discoveries on these other worlds that will affect our world.

And the one that we're all talking about this week is the Europa Clipper, a replica shown here. Because it launched, right. And I testified in front of Congress in 2013 about the importance of this mission, where we're looking for signs of life on another world or organic material on another world to learn more about our own world. And we do it for inspirational, wonderful joy of discoveries reasons, right?

But it's also, if you want to be the world leader in technology, you invest in space exploration. I testified once, but I wasn't representing a whole organization as you are. Well, that's what I say. That's a different force operating. Plus, I'm one voice, and my voice is not irrelevant, to be sure. It's relevant. But when these congressmen and senators get thousands, tens of thousands of 10Ks of letters and emails, it affects them.

We'll be back after this short break. Greetings, Bill Nye here. 2024 was another great year for the Planetary Society, thanks to support from people like you. This year, we celebrated the natural wonders of space with our Eclipsorama event in the Texas Hill Country. Hundreds of us, members from around the world, gathered to witness totality.

We also held a Search for Life Symposium at our headquarters here in Pasadena and had experts come together to share their research and ideas about life in the universe. And finally, after more than 10 years of advocacy efforts, the Europa Clipper mission is launched and on its way to the Jupiter system.

With your continued support, we can keep our work going strong into 2025. When you make a gift today, it will be matched up to $100,000 thanks to a special matching challenge from a very generous Planetary Society member.

Your contribution, especially when doubled, is critical to expanding our mission. Now is the time to make a difference before years end at planetary.org/planetaryfund. As a supporter of the Planetary Society, you make space exploration a reality. Thank you.

At the helm of this ship that has influence. When I testified, I'm just Neil talking to the Congress. And I said, what am I doing here? That's what they said to everybody said to me, Neil, behind your back. So I look at this list here because it's not just Europa Clipper, which is successfully on route. It's just most recent Hubble, Mars sample return, the new horizons to Pluto.

The Europa Clipper, of course. I got two other missions here. Veritas.

which means truth, but that's all I know about it. And Viper, what are those? So Veritas is a mission to Venus. So I haven't had a mission to Venus in 40 years. It's not entirely hospitable. No, well, but you want to have a look and see what happened on Venus. What happened on Venus, we don't want to happen on Earth. In fact, people talk about climate change now regularly. As you know, I've been whining about it for- You've got a whole book. Yes. What's the name of that book?

Undeniable. Undeniable. Yes. A whole book talking about the reality of climate change and how to spread that information against misinformation. Misinformation. Yes. Undeniable. Largely from the fossil fuel industry, who's worked hard to make scientific uncertainty the same as doubt about the whole thing. Right. But that aside...

You can argue that climate change on Earth was discovered by studying the atmosphere of Venus. And so in 1984 or so. So it's really an extraordinary thing. It's this classic Bruce Murray. What are you going to find when you go exploring these other worlds? We don't know. That's why we go exploring.

So, Bill, what you just said reminds me of that quote from T.S. Eliot, where he says, I'm going to mangle it, but the essence of it will be there. You explore the world, you know, see new places. Travel. Travel. And then you come back home, and only then will you know that place first.

For the very first time. As I say, the more we explore these other worlds, the more we know about our own. That's that. Is it a new field? Comparative planetology. Carl Sagan used to toss that phrase around like it was a real phrase. It's not like we're here and everything else is something else. So another big part of the planetary society's identity was the successful funding, appeal funding and launch of

and deployment of the solar sail, which was the dream of so many people. And one of your founders, Lou Friedman, wrote a book. Yes. And so this was like a very big experience. Ann Druyan was a big proponent of this. Oh, yes. Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan's widow and board member. So would you count that as among the bigger achievements? Oh, yeah, especially under my watch. Okay.

No, really. We had a solar sail launch funded largely by Andrian and people associated with the Discovery Channel. And it crashed in the ocean. And it was okay. Game over. Done. Boom. So then it took many years, nine more years, to get it together to build another spacecraft. And in that interim...

This thing called the CubeSat emerged, cubical satellite, which are 10 centimeters by 10 centimeters by 10 centimeters. And then variations of that have been created. You can go online and buy parts for a satellite. And they're cheap to launch. Very inexpensive. It's like your science project. Yeah, it is. And a lot of students, a lot of universities and high schools participate in CubeSat programs.

And the other thing is electronics have gotten increasingly smaller, more miniaturized. One could argue that the miniaturization of electronics was stimulated by space. Yes. Well, it's, how to say, symbiotic. Yeah. We were able to get funding. 50,000 people around the world just think it's great. We launched a spacecraft in 2014 to prove that it would work.

And by the way, I've done very little as CEO. The place is run by Jennifer Vaughn, our chief operating officer. We have a chief financial officer, Jim So. We have chief of communications, Daniel O'Donnell. We got a development officer. We got all these people. But once in a while, somebody's got to decide to do something. So it was my decision, should we take this launch in 2014 with a spacecraft that wasn't as capable as we hoped one day would be?

but it had cameras and so we launched in 2014 we got these pictures down and that enabled us to get funding to launch light sail 2. there it is you could see the light sail unfurling is it yes and so by the way real so right there is a boom that uh golden looking thing is uh beryllium copper and uh

what's cool about it or remarkable, this is the same material in much shorter length. Just notice how stiff it is if you try to bend it. Yeah, it can. And then notice how compact it is if you try to roll it or bend it in the other axis. Okay.

And so this is what enables... You fold it up to get into the fairing. Well rolled up. Yeah. And if you look at it, there's these tiny dots. These are laser stitch welded at the U.S. Air Force Research Lab. Anyway, I mention all this because there's a lot of cool technology that we...

And flew in 2017. As any good space mission does. Yes. Because you're doing something that's never been done before. Never been done before. Somebody's got to innovate. Yep, had to innovate. The control laws, how you steer it, and the rolling it up and getting it robust enough to tolerate cosmic rays without being too heavy to fly. We did all that.

And so very proud of that. And people ask us, what's next? I'll just say, stay tuned. So a quick, I want to remind people, unless they've been living under a rock, many people, you taught them science growing up.

Bill Nye the Science Guy. It really is amazing. And now they're full grown adults with kids and some of them have kids and you're like Papa Science here. Yeah. And you were the heir apparent to what maybe was in our generation. Who's the guy on TV? Don Herbert. Yeah, Don Herbert. I had lunch with him. I look like nobody. I had lunch with him. Don Herbert. And he was Mr. What was he? Mr. Wizard. Mr. Wizard. Are you fooling me?

with me, Mr. Wizard? So I went to his memorial service. Oh. And you guys, I was just crying. I just couldn't get over it, man. The guy was so influential. I can tell you the technical aspects of everything, but his show was done intuitively. The Science Guy show, we had all this research that 10 years old is as old as you can be to get the so-called lifelong passion for science. To get it when you... So it was dialed in... I was nine.

I was nine. I love you, man. Yeah. It was dialed in for people 10 years old. That's why, that's part of why the show was so successful. And then you would,

I don't want to say transition out of that, but you added to your professional profile. Yes. Yes. To be a space advocate, like for adults and for the nation and for the president. For the world. This sort of thing. Yeah. And did you ride in Air Force One one time? Yeah. Excuse me. Barack Obama got to meet me. Yeah. Yeah.

And spent some time. Because you're chilling with Barack. Oh, well, yeah. But he was, he is a very thoughtful and frankly charming guy. And smart, yeah. And so I, well, he's brilliant. And so,

We talked about space exploration on Marine One. Oh, the helicopter. You've hung out with him. Not on his airplanes, though. But it was quite cool, and he was very receptive to addressing climate change. He was very interested in that. And his policies led to...

This is the beginning of the start of a beginning of climate policies involved in the Inflation Reduction Act, a.k.a. the Clean Power Program. Right, which has some elements to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, Bill.

Neil. Planetary Society. Great to see you. So where do we find it? You got a website for it? Planetary.org. It's your homepage. Planetary.org. Planetary.org. Okay. And we have a podcast. Is there some big button there that you can join? Yes. And so on every page, if you guys want to run a nonprofit, you put a donate button on every page. Right. That's what it is. And so we...

Thank everybody out there who is a member. Encourage those of you who for some reason are not members to join us. And we have now the Planetary Academy aimed at families. And the monthly Planetary Report. Planetary is there four times a year now because people get their space information on the electric internet. So we have longer form articles in the printed magazine. Rather than journalistic articles, which would make any sense. Some of each. We have iClaim.

We have the world's premier long-form planetary science journalism. Nice. But I myself have referenced it to catch up on certain elements. Yes, well, thank you. Yes, we have the best reporters going. Because, you know, mission information is very fragmented. It is everywhere. There's a little bit there and a little bit there, and it comes into a coherent, sensible, pedagogical delivery. Thank you all. Planetary.org, turn it up loud. This has been my exclusive conversation with the one and only

Bill Nye, the science guy. I had so much fun helping to produce that episode of StarTalk. I'll leave a link to the full conversation and the video version on the webpage for this episode of Planetary Radio. You can find that at planetary.org slash radio. But before we let you go, we've got a huge space news announcement.

On December 4th, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announced his proposed choice for the next NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman. The nomination won't be official until Trump takes office in January, but Jared has publicly accepted the nomination in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. Jared Isaacman is the billionaire founder and CEO of Shift4, a payments processing company that he started at age 16. He

He's also a huge space fan, as evidenced by his ongoing series of self-funded SpaceX Dragon flights. The first was called Inspiration4 and happened in 2021. It was the first all-civilian crewed orbital spaceflight. Their adventure was documented in the Netflix series called Countdown Inspiration4 Mission to Space. The subsequent Polaris Dawn mission launched just earlier this year in September 2024.

It carried its crew farther from Earth than any humans had been since Apollo 17. That was 52 years ago. Pleriston also marked the first private spacewalk. Jared Isaacman flew on both of those missions. Before we get into this conversation, I want to note that the Planetary Society is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization. We don't endorse candidates, but we are committed to working with NASA leaders to help shape our collective space goals.

I'm now joined by Casey Dreyer, our chief of space policy, and Jack Corelli, our director of government relations. Hey, Jack and Casey. Thanks for joining me again. Good to see you. Hey, Sarah. It's great to be here. So I've got Jack here in the office and Casey up in Washington. And we all just got word that the next NASA administrator has just been selected. So who wants to break the news? Who is it?

I guess I'll do it. Why not? Jared Isaacman, who, I mean, by the time everyone's listening to this, probably knows. But Jared Isaacman is a billionaire owner of a payments processing company. But for us, notable for purchasing a number of private space flights through SpaceX and has orbited in space twice with the last one, Polaris Dawn, taking him further from the Earth than any astronaut had been since Apollo 17.

So it's an outside-the-box pick in a way, but obviously a big fan of space and someone who... It's interesting. It's a first person who's been to space who might lead NASA who is not an astronaut. Yeah, I was really into their first mission, the Inspiration4 crew, the first all-civilian mission that went to space. I'm not personally surprised that Jared Isaacman is the choice here, but at the same time, a little bit of a departure from the classic NASA administrators. How are you feeling about it, Jack? Yeah.

I'm feeling pretty good about it. So, you know, in previous administrations, including the sort of outgoing administration now, we've we've had folks who have been a part of the agency either for a long time or who have overseen the agency in political roles, whether in the House or Senate.

In the case of Jim Bridenstine in the first Trump administration from the House side and then Senator Bill Nelson on the Senate side. And so it's kind of a maybe we'll say breath of fresh air, right? It's it's new person in the room who has a vested interest in the success of.

of the agency, but who has done things, extraordinary things in a private capacity as well, and sort of starts to build that bridge between the commercial side of space and the civil side of space. And I think is bringing a lot of fresh new ideas and has a lot of, I think, goodwill from the public as well as policymakers.

But we don't have any idea of how he's going to fit into this political role. Now that we know this is the choice, I know it's fresh on both of your minds because we just found out. But does this tell us anything about where we think NASA funding and funding for programs like Mars Sample Return or Artemis might be going? I think it's important to...

really reinforce that the NASA administrator has influence and they obviously run the agency, but they execute what Congress allows them to do ultimately. And Congress provides the funding and can change the law and compel NASA to do, you know, various things or not.

So he has he has to go and actually build coalitions. And I think that may be the biggest unknown here. It's very different. You know, we talk about, you know, folks who want to come in and run government like a business. And I think in the best case scenario, what they mean by that is, can we make things more efficient, make people accountable and have the ability to really be answerable and dynamic?

Public agencies, just by for a number of reasons, are just fundamentally different creatures than a private business. And it's all about coalition building. And so I can see if you are coming from the private sector, the difficult thing of trying to go to a senator's office and cajole, beg, ask, whatever you can do to to get your priorities funded is.

You have to put in that legwork. Bridenstine was very good at that. And he was very put in a lot of effort doing that. It takes a lot of patience and you have to know how politics work. I'm not saying Jared can't do that. It's just a very different skill set. And this is always why when businessmen do come into government, they tend not to run it like a business because you can't without fundamentally changing the law. When we learned about.

who was going to be the upcoming president. We speculated a lot about what this was going to mean for the difference for funding for human spaceflight versus the Science Mission Directorate and all of the space missions to other worlds that we love. Do we have any clue what Isaacman might feel about these? I mean, clearly, he isn't the one that controls the budget, but at the same time, he's going to be shaping some of these priorities.

Well, I think that for Isaacman, there was a period of time in the last couple of years in which he was advocating for a private mission to boost the Hubble Space Telescope to higher orbit. And so I think has a lot of reverence and respect for the work that NASA has done in the past to expand space.

our understanding of the universe and to provide these platforms that scientists around the world have used to do just that. And so I think that there is a lot of opportunities here for out of the box thinking for missions like Mars sample return, for future missions like Habitable Worlds Observatory, these like really big flagship and even smaller, you know, new frontiers and discovery class within planetary science missions that will be the hubbles of, you know, 20 years from now, potentially.

And so I think that there is a lot of hope here. We don't know a lot about how he feels about maybe specific program lines in the current NASA budget, but he has that hope.

I think, sense of awe that we all feel when we see a new image from the James Webb Space Telescope or see a new picture from the surface of Mars. And I think it's great to have someone who shares sort of that reverence for those things that we do in space and who has taken it upon himself to be an advocate for those missions and for expanding capabilities of the commercial sector.

At the same time, I think it's clear he's a commercial space guy. I mean, I think that's let's not beat around that aspect of it. I think he released a statement after. I mean, it's always funny to say Trump didn't technically nominate him because Trump isn't president yet and he's not actually nominated. It isn't whatever his intent to nominate him.

Regardless, after the news came out, he did release a statement on Twitter and he called out the things that he seems personally excited about in space. Right. And so I'll name a few manufacturing, biotechnology, mining, perhaps new sources of energy, thriving space economy. This is a commercial space guy. And, you know, he's friends with Elon Musk. So he shares a personal and has worked really closely with SpaceX over the past years to to do his private space flights.

That will be his incoming position is that SpaceX is the ideal, I would hazard to guess. And he sees space much more through this economic development, human progress. For those of you who've listened to my episode with Roger Lownius on human spaceflight as a religion, he's kind of a that kind of technocratic salvation theology of getting people out into space as a means to improve the human race.

I share a lot of those feelings and I would like to see him mention science, but he notably didn't in his public statements. And so this will be one of the things we, as Jack said, we'll look forward to hearing more about and also do a lot of outreach to talk about. He says Americans will walk on the moon and Mars, and in doing so, we will make life better here on Earth. So notable call out to humans, to Mars, too. I think that's a that's an important statement.

I am curious what this might mean for the SLS rocket, given his history with SpaceX. But it's hard to speculate at this point. He said on Twitter, a program like the SLS, and I'm quoting here, outrageously expensive, tolerable because, hey, everyone wins. You know, he says, as a result, our children don't get to see many moon landings and the dream of an enduring lunar presence fades away. He's not a fan. And what's interesting is

Given his, you know, he's as Jack said, he's not a political person. He wasn't a politician. I think in a lot of ways he will be more palatable to the Senate Democrats. And that may be enough to overcome any sort of SLS adjacent coalition of Republican senators where most of the money is spent in ensuring his nomination. That'll be the really interesting dynamic to see.

Yeah, I mean, I think this just demonstrates an opportunity that space advocates like those listening to this episode can have in the coming years. We have an opportunity with the incoming administration to shape some of these areas where all we can do is speculate.

We have statements on, like Casey just had, statements on SLS and on these sort of larger visions, but there's so much that NASA works on that isn't enumerated in these statements that we have currently.

And so I think this offers a great opportunity to work with the incoming administration, incoming Congress, because they're also a big part of this. They hold the purse strings, set a lot of these big policies in authorizing legislation to build that future that we want of expanding human activity, both robotic and crude, beyond Earth to expand human knowledge and embrace this moment that we have to have a strong space program, both

leveraging that commercial side, but also having a strong civil space agency, which is pushing the boundaries of humanologists as it has the last 60 plus years. You both have been in a really interesting situation for the last few weeks.

trying to figure out who to connect with as this new incoming administration takes power in January. And now we know who the next NASA administrator is going to be. So what are the next steps in trying to shape the narrative going forward? How are we going to be connecting with him and all the people that he's going to be working with in order to try to make sure that our priorities in space that include exploring other worlds are actually met?

Well, at this point, it's a lot of coffee conversations, right? It's meeting with folks on the Hill and in these incoming offices, a lot of email conversation at this point. And

I think hitting the ground running in January is going to be important. I mean, I will say just my own stance here is I was not expecting a pick for NASA administrator this early in the transition. If I remember correctly, last time it didn't take place before January 20th in the previous Trump administration. And so really exciting to see that someone has been named and gives us a lot of runway leading up to what is likely going to be the first big budget fight

of 2025, assuming that the continuing resolution does get extended into March, as has been reported from D.C. And so, you know, these first few months are going to be critical. And so there's going to be a lot of opportunities to engage the incoming Congress on funding priorities and other pieces of legislation. The administration, just by virtue of it being a new administration, has going to have a lot of energy in its first hundred days to get things done. And a Congress that seems also willing to work with them on some of these

these big, big issues, including the federal budget. And so it's going to take a lot of legwork. And great that we have our day of action planned for within those first hundred days of the new Congress and new administration. And so March 24th, 2025 is going to be a great day to be, you know, advocating for that future of space exploration that we want.

And registration for our Day of Action is open. And I just want to mention, if you register early, you do get a discount on coming with us to Washington, D.C. to do this kind of advocacy work. But rest assured, whether or not you can join us in Washington, D.C., there'll still be many opportunities for you to advocate and participate in this. And I am tentatively optimistic. This wasn't a pick that I anticipated, but it's not one that gives me a bunch of trepidation either. Honestly, space does bring out the best in us. And...

We should just clarify the Planetary Society doesn't endorse nominations and will pledge to work with whoever is confirmed. But yeah, I think having somebody at the end of the day who clearly loves space and is personally familiar with the risks of sending humans into space, who wants space exploration to be something that we do here at the society, which is to inspire people, to motivate people, to have these shared values of curiosity and tenacity and

That is not a bad thing. I mean, that's that's a lot of reasons to be optimistic. Right. And I think so. We there's questions, obviously, to understand and notably also business conflicts of interest and conflicts of interest with SpaceX. I mean, these are all things that we look forward to hearing about and should be discussed. And this is that's why we have a Senate confirmation process to work through a lot of these and to put those in order. But yes, at the end of the day, someone who loves space running NASA is a good place to be.

Yeah, I'm just envisioning that image of him sticking his head out of the little pod in space, looking down at the Earth, hung up on his wall in his new NASA administrator office. Little did we know that at that time we were watching the potentially next NASA administrator take his first private steps into space. So again, setting new boundaries, breaking barriers seems to be his MO.

Let's wish him the best in this process and look forward to whoever the next NASA administrator is and the other personnel, key personnel that will be selected as part of the incoming administration. Really looking forward to working with them on achieving these big dreams. Well, thanks for the update, Jack and Casey, and good luck in the coming year. This is going to be an interesting time. Thank you, Sarah. You'll be hearing from us for sure. We'll keep you updated in the new year as the Trump administration's plans for NASA take shape.

Casey also wrote a new article on the subject. It's called, Who is Jared Isaacman, Trump's proposed NASA administrator, and what would he do with NASA? It's available on the Planetary Society's website, but I'll also link it to this episode of Planetary Radio. But in the meantime, we'll check in with Dr. Bruce Betts, our chief scientist for What's Up. Hey, Bruce.

So there's a lot crammed into the show this week because as we were preparing, we got the news that we have potentially the next NASA administrator selected. And that's Jared Isaacman, who we talked about earlier on in the show.

And one of the things that Jared did more recently was he went up with a crew on the Polaris Dawn mission. They took a group of people further away from Earth than anyone has been since the Apollo program. And as part of this, they passed into a lower portion of one of the Van Allen belts.

So I wanted to ask you, what are the Van Allen belts and how do they impact space travelers? They are particle radiation trapped in the Earth's magnetosphere and zipping around and kind of two toruses, donuts, a couple of donuts and sometimes more. But there's one lower donut, which Polaris Don would have just kind of dipped into the lower variable part of it.

at over 1,000 kilometers altitude, but it really gets going up higher, 3,000, up several thousand more kilometers. Then there's usually a gap, and then you go out to... And they move around, which is why it's hard to nail them down, but...

15,000, 20,000 kilometers all the way out sometimes to 60,000, but it's more concentrated in certain areas. But they were formed by particles, mostly electrons and protons, getting trapped in the Earth's magnetosphere. So the upper belt comes primarily from solar wind, basically solar radiation.

where it comes in and electrons preferentially get trapped and scurry around until eventually they had enough atmosphere to chill out. And then the lower belt is primarily from interactions of cosmic rays, high energy particles coming from beyond the solar system with the Earth's atmosphere. And that tends to throw off protons and they get trapped down below. And so there's a higher concentration of these

fast-moving subatomic particles that come under the term particle radiation, which if they hit you will over time cause damage. But it's one of those how much do you absorb and going through them

and not staying in them, you're fine. I mean, it's a relatively low dose. Also, we know they're there. So they design the orbit as much as possible to avoid the highest energy parts. They have radiation shielding. So it's not like the ones going through the denser parts. They didn't

party around without shielding and such. So they're good. They were discovered by a dude named Van Allen, a famous physicist, scientist of the early particle radiation things. And interestingly, were discovered in the first ever American satellite, Explorer 1, carried a Geiger counter, and they'd had a very elliptical orbit, and they discovered these things. Even very recently, we discovered a temporary satellite

belt in between the other two belts. So there's not only variability in those, but there's variability in that because there's variability in the sun and the magnet and the sun's activity and where we are. Ben Allen belts.

I'm really looking forward to seeing the data they get from the dummy that they put on the Artemis 1 mission because they were trying to test more about this radiation, but also how radiation from the Van Allen belts and from space in general impacts women's bodies since we want to send people to space and people of all different walks of life. So I've actually connected with the Artemis team to get someone on the show to talk about that now that we know a little bit more. So that'll be interesting.

But in the meantime, I think it's time for our random space fact. One of these days we're going to do one that's cat themed. Just wait for it.

Yeah, we'll see. The Van Allen radiation belts before Polaristan, and still in terms of all people who have gone all the way through the Van Allen belts from one side to the other, there are 24. There are 27 slots on nine Apollo missions that went to the area of the moon, and then three astronauts who went twice, John Young, Gene Cernan, and Jim Lovell.

That'd be so cool. Not that I want to be irradiated by space, but the only thing I'd be willing to put up with that level of radiation for is going to the moon, man. That'd be so cool. All right. Everybody go out there, look up at the night sky and think about dog food. Thank you and good night. We've reached the end of this week's episode of Planetary Radio, but we'll be back next week with one of the people recreating Mars Arane forms, colloquially known as Mars spiders, in the lab at JPL.

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