>> good evening, everyone, and welcome. thank you for your patients. i'm suzanne morris, the senior manager of public programs here at the museum, and we're thrilled to have you all here tonight, so give yourselves a round of applause. [applause] the american museum of natural history has been home to some the country's greatest thinkers, scientists and citizens who changed the way we understand scientific and natural phenomena and have brought that understanding to the national consciousness. from theodore roosevelt who created reservation process and margaret immediate. neil degrassetyson brings us

his beauty and importance in space science and exploration. the directer of the hayden planetarium, born and raised in new york city, he attended bronx high school of science and earned a ba in physics from harvard and a ph.d. in astrophysics from columbia. that's right. [laughter] he's been an adviser to nasa and three presidents on matters related to space exploration and has been awarded 16 honorary honorarydoctorates and has a asteroid named after him. he comes here to talk about space chronicles: the ultimate frontier. join me in giving him a warm welcome. [cheers and applause]

[applause] >> thank you. that was a warm introduction. just so you know, this is the only public talk anywhere that i'm giving on this book, so you are here, here and now, for it. just so you know. i'm just saying. you're not missing it somewhere else. let me get ready up here.

let me tell you how it all began. there was a big bang. [laughter] no. it was the 1990s. i was approached by columbia university press to write a chapter in an encyclopedia they were preparing to celebrate the end of the 20th century, and it was called quite simply, "the columbia history of the 20th century," and it might even have it here -- this was it. okay. what's significant about it is the person originally scheduled to write that, approached in 1996, the perp originally scheduled to write that was carl sagan. he was asked to contribute a chapter on cosmic discovery to that volume. he had taken ill in 1995.

he died in 1996. my name was put up as one who would then write instead. i was asked, even though the size of the project was bigger than i was accustomed to, and at the time, i was writing coal yums of 2,000 or 3 ,000 words, what i would pump out in a month. this chapter was asked of me to be 10,000 words. i -- i -- i almost declined, and then i said, no, maybe i can do something different, a little more creative. i thought, okay, why not think of discovery of octobers and places, but maybe the discovery

of ideas, and i would track the transition from the discovery of places going back to the era of great explorers to the discovery of ideas. once you map the whole earth, what is left there to discover? yes, there's the bottom of the ocean, but philosophically, what's left for you once you know the whole earth is there? there's the exploitation of ideas, and those ideas take you beyond earth and to space. i thought to myself, at the time, i really want to go to mars. like with people. that's an uncommon view among my colleagues. my astrophysics colleagues, by and large, maybe a 3-to-1 ratio, see no value of sending humans into space. now that sentiment, by the way, is held by an entire generation of my colleagues who grew up in the 1960s wanting to be a

scientist because of the manned program. there's a little of hypocrisy there, and i've taken them to task on it. not only that, but it's, in my judgment, politically naive to think that nasa is simply your private siensz -- science funding agency. more on that later. i said to myself, how much would it cost to go to nasa? let's say to go to mars it costs a half billion -- we can do that if it cost half a billion. let's say it's a half a trillion let's say or even a trillion. that's expensive. that's a lot of money. actually, it's a small percent of our budget when spread out over many years, but nonetheless, it's a lot of money, and so for this chapter, what i said to myself is i'm going to go back throughout the

history of time and ask of the greatest projects ever overtaken this to invest in this way, and there's a chapter, maybe push it to a book that drove humans to do great things, and then i'd look to the mission to mars, line it up in the matrix and say, okay, mars is this percent of gdp, and who else spent that percent of their gdp, and what did they do about it? in my analysis, contained in this chapter, the one chapter in here, the chapter's called "paths to discovery," and by the way, don't tell the columbia press about this, but you don't have to buy this book because that book was excerpted for the space chronicles book.

[laughter] i brought this for continuity so you knew how it all began. i made a list of the most expensive things we've done as a species. we could agree with most of what appears on this list. there's the great wall of china. expensive in human and financial capital. the great wall of china, the manhattan project, the apollo project, the cathedral building during the renaissance, the -- what else would we put there? how about the columbus voyages, very expensive to queen isabella and king ferninand. the pyramids. let's make our list. you gripe about the list? sure. we'd agree, major investments in human and financial capital, and then i asked what was the motivation for those? in my list, there's the most

expensive things we've ever done, came up with only three drivers. the number one driver of them all is war or you can call it defense. that gets you the great wall of china, the manhattan project, and, in fact, that also gets you the apole -- apollo project. it's the -- i don't want to die driver, okay? if you feel threatened and you're at risk, you'll spend money with no limit to not die. okay. that's obvious in retrospect. what's next? the prospect of gaining great economic wealth, not quite as potent as the i don't want to die driver, but it is really powerful operating on the motivations of nations. that's what gets you the

columbus voyages. columbus himself was a discoverer, but somebody had to write the check, and the people who wrote the check said, oh, by the way, chris, while you're going, take these spanish flags with you and put them wherever you land, declare the land for spain, see if there's riches there. the queen didn't say, oh, tell us what new things you learned about the botany of where you land. [laughter] no, no. he might be interested in it. his crew might be interested in it, but not the people who wrote the checks. third greatest driver -- we see much less of this today than what was common hundreds of years ago, and that is the prize of royalty or deity, the effort to appease an entity that's perceived to be or is literally more powerful than you are. that's how you get the

pyramids. that's how you get the cathedral building. now, so today you don't have kings and gods motivating major funded projects of nations, but there was a 2k5eu -- day when we did. i said to myself, okay, if we're going to go to mars and mars is expensive, it's going to have to satisfy one of those two criteria; otherwise, we're just never going to mars, and this was my revelation, and that is the centerpiece of that chapter and all the rest of what went on in human culture orbits that revelation in that chapter. i said to myself, my, gosh, i wonder how many people know this because you hang around space enthusiast, and what do they tell you? they say, oh, the reason we stopped going to the moon is we didn't have leaders. we needed visionary people.

we stopped being risk takers. there's a whole risk of arguments people give you for why we are not -- why the space frontier has not continued beyond humans landing on the moon. there's a whole list. i deduced that every -- without exception -- every item on this list was delusional. [laughter] it doesn't include other things, oh, explore space for science because it's in our dna, because we're americans, and americans are explorers. all of these reasons are given. my read of history tells me that none of those reasons matter to those who are writing the checks. that's the difference. so i thought, well, i got to

tell people this because if we're going to go to mars, then we have to motivate people in a way that's either military driven, but nobodiments that to be the reason or economically driven, and so i started exploring in what ways our presence in space can satisfy one or the other or both of those criteria. i was invited after that chapter was published to a space development conference in washington. i was positioned between buzz aldrin and the fellow who wrote "october sky". anybody remember that guy? homer hickim. thank you. these are like raw-raw folks. one has been on the moon, and the other one was inspired, and so there's a lot of inspiration

talk. in front of me and behind me, but that's not what i talked about. i said any ambitions in space, if you expect them to be driven just by the will to want to go or by the longing for a charismatic leader, you are deluded. that was -- i was blunt. i said it right to buzz's face. [laughter] i was more polite about it at the time, but i said, you know, i think you might be misdirected in the thinking. that's the polite way to say you are clueless about what's actually driving human motivation here, and so, okay. a couple years go by. i get a phone call. it's the white house. this is april 2001. the white house. it's the george w. bush white

house. i get a phone call. they say, oh, is this neil? i said, yes. they said, oh, we want to check your interest to see if you would serve on a presidential commission. commission on what? i don't know what a commission is. [laughter] first of all, i'm an academic. i don't hang out in washington. i don't know anything about washington. in academia, politics is the barrier between where you're standing and where you want to go, whereas in washington, politics is the currency of all interactions, and so this is not my culture. they want me to come to washington to serve on a commission. i said, well, what's the title of the commission? the commission on the future of the united states' aerospace industry. i said, you got the right tyson? you know, i fly in airplanes. i don't fly airplanes. no, we know who you are. we read your writings.

we -- i said, could they have read -- what? how? i said, well, who else? they read my the list of other people there. buzz aldrin was going to be on that commission. [laughter] and just in case you don't remember, buzz was apollo 11 astronaut, the second person to walk on the moon of the first mission to the lunar surface, so so -- all right. there's 12 commissioners appointed to this. all right. now, i'm from new york city, born and raised. now, in new york, you can go all day without ever even seeing a republican, okay? [laughter] [applause] am i lying? i'm good >> -- i'm good; right? i'm not -- [laughter] anyway, there's one, in the

corner, in the back, i think. i'm getting called by a republican president, and i'm an academic, and i learned that george bush in yale did not do well in the astronomy class and he was still counting dimple chads in florida, and they said, well, we have to ask you a few questions. out came a series of question, all questions that are illegal on job applications, i was asked. [laughter] well, because it's an appointment, it's not a job; right? the rules don't apply. what's your sexual preference? what's your religion? have you ever protested? have you been arrested for anything? have you protested and almost got arrested? [laughter] it was this whole long series of questions. then, then towards the -- i answered the questions, fine --

and then it said are you familiar with the president's politics and policies? i said, well, yes, but just from what i read in the paper. you know, i don't -- i'm not a politician, but so, yeah, i think i'm familiar. then they said, what do you think of them? [laughter] so, i thought, how do i answer this? what was probably only 10 seconds of thought felt like it was many minutes before i uttered my reply. at the time, george bush was appointing members of his cabinet, and some of them looked promising, at the time. this is early 2001. colon powell was announced, and condoleezza rice, provost from standard. these are educated people. he's appointing people smarter than he is.

that, okay, there's hope there, i thought to myself. [laughter] so i said, because what i really wanted to do is reach through the phone, and what do you think of them? i wanted to reach from the phone and go -- dimple chads -- and i said, well, that's not productive. they are trying to do good here. [laughter] i gained my composure, and like i said, it was probably only 10 seconds, but felt like minutes. i replieded saying i applaud the president's efforts to surround himself with talented people so that he can make the best decisions he can in the interest of this nation. [laughter] [applause] that was the thursday. by monday, i was appointed to a presidential commission. [laughter] to study the future of united states' aerospace industry. i would learn i was the lone academic on this commission.

i would learn that coming from my left of liberal postures, having been born and raised in new york coming from a liberal family, i would learn that in order to have a conversation with those who are not, you cannot stand there and have that conversation. it doesn't work because there's actually a smoke screen there, and way on the far right, there's a smoke screen, too. you don't have that conversation. this is what the television news talk shows do. they get people with hot air on both ends, and at the end, there's just more hot air. you have to crawl out of those zones, stand in the middle, and then have that conversation. over the period of that commission, that's what i did. upon doing so, i would learn things about the far right. i would not have known or even seen or understood, and so, in

fact, it was illuminating for me to have this experience. i'll give you an example of a liberal smoke screen bias because there's biases on each extreme, and it's hard to see them when you are there. you have to step out and look back. here's a bleeding liberal, a bleeding heart liberal bias. ready? because nobody in new york liked bush; right? i said, well, i was appointed to a bush commission. oh, they appointed you because you're black. [laughter] okay. actually, there's another black person on the commission. a four star air force general so the argument evaporates immediately. there is no argument, okay? there were two women on the panel. one of them an aerospace analyst

for wall street, and another was a former member of congress with air force bases in her district in florida. other people there? there's the head of aerospace at lockheed martin. there was, of course, buzz who's been on the moon. we introduce ourselves, and it's tough to follow buzz, you know? i've been on the moon. okay. we're done. i got nothing. [laughter] i got nothing on that, okay? [laughter] you know, i'm -- what was in the meeting, what i noticed was that everybody there reeked of testosterone because they were captains of industry, heads of agency, former, you know, security advisers, even the women had testosterone. like i said, the securities analyst for wall street, anything she would say or write about your company would affect

your stock price. you know, they treated her kindly. [laughter] now, why am i taking you down this road? i'm just trying to share with you my baptism into this world of aerospace and nasa and what i've done about it since then. all right. that commission was formed because -- oh, back up one moment. twelve members of the commission. it's a white house commission, but the rules are six members are appointed by congress. six members are appointed by the white house. of the six members appointed by congress, there was a mix that reflected the partisan split in congress at the time, okay? this is a -- trying to be politically fair as they construct this, but since it's a white house commission, the white house appoints six people. bush could have appointed six

republicans, but he didn't. i'm not a republican. that was one the questions they asked me. what is your political afghanistan? you know they will ask me that if they ask my religion and sexual preference, and so i said i'm a registered democrat. that was known to them. i was nonetheless hired. the talk that, oh, bush, they'd never hire -- no, that's false. that's the spoke screen that exists at the limits of each of the political spectrums. i'm there, and apparently in the previous 15 years, the aerospace industry lost a half million jobs. there'd be huge consolidation from dozens and does -- dozens of companies down to four or five which is why the aerospace companies have joined names. lock heed martin. these companies started collapsing down into a few.

congress was worried what effect this would have on the aerospace industry of the nation. aerospace is responsible for our military, airborne security, responsible for transportation, for commerce. they recognized there was a fundamental part of what it is to live in america in the 2 # -- 21st century, and they wanted to get to the bottom of it. they not only make airplanes, but the spaceships. we had aeropeople on the commission and space people on the commission. i was counted as one of the space people. one of the trips we took was around the world. this is 2002. around the world to key places that are burgeoning aerospace industries to see if there's competition we're not living up to, what are they doing that we're not. we visited china. i went to beijing in 2002, my first time there, i went there with the complete portfolio of

stereotypes of what to accept. boulevards of bicycles; right? that's what i expected. that was on the film loops i saw growing up. arrive in beijing, yeah, there's bicycles, but that's not what's filling the boulevards. there's mercedess and voke -- volkswagens and bmws, not like any picture i had seen. we meet with can want of industries there, heads of agency there, and i look carefully, and i see on their hand, college rings, graduate degrees from american universities in engineering. almost every one of the leaders that were shaping the future culture, the future -- the future industrial culture of china were trained and educated

here in engineering schools. we took an excursion to the great wall of china. had never been there, all right? i'm on the great wall -- the wall just goes -- you -- [laughter] and then it disappears in the midst; right? you can't see the end of it. it's -- there it is. i look in every direction. there's only bricks that made the wall. by the way, do you know what defined the distance? there's a reason for the distance set between where the turrets are. that's right. it had to do with the precision in which an archer can kill you at a distance so the turrets are twice that distance, so anyone climbing over, they can take you out. it's a military project as we already agreed. not only that, the stairs within the turrets turn in a particular

way so that if you're right-handed, the side where you carry the bow, doesn't rub into someone coming up the stairs from the other direction. military thinking of the time. anyhow, that had nothing to do with -- that's just an aside. [laughter] i'm on the great wall of china, and i don't see technology anywhere. this is out in the middle of nowhere. by the way, there were like chinese peasants that came in -- guessing they were pes cants because they were sun darkened and not well-dressed, it was a trip for them, but they were not looking at the wall, but wanted to photograph themselves next to me. [laughter] apparently, i was more interesting than the wall. [laughter] the only black person they've ever seen in their lives. [laughter] so i said, i'm going to try something.

i said, can i borrow your cell phone? i called my parents in westchester, new york, dialed the number. my mother answers. i said, mom? she said, oh, are you home so soon? that's how good that connection was. [laughter] i said, i'm on the great wall of china, there's no antennas anywhere! i don't see any electricity. i don't see anything, and i'm having a conversation with me mother, and she thinks i am back home. [laughter] there was nobody in china saying can you hear me now? can you hear me now? [laughter] something was under foot in china. something was going on there that we were in denial of.

visited russia, star city. the head of star city were there. we had buzz with us. there's a book in their offices signed by folks who had. to orbit, and it was a nice ceremony where buzz signed the book. there's a statue standing bold right out front. it was 10:30 in the morning, i think, and the head of the center, we all crowded into his office, and he's got a cabinet behind him and it's 10:30, and he says, "time for vodka." [laughter] okay, you have to go with the flow. [laughter] i'm having the vodka, sipping the vodka, and i'm kicked under the table, like, no, your pinky doesn't stick out when you down vodka in russia, okay? [laughter] here's my point about that. [laughter] many more points to come, and, plus, i want to ensure we have

time for q&a. we visited france, england, with whom we have, we are told, a common language. [laughter] we visited all these countries, but here's russia. i don't know the alphabet. i recognize a couple, some look like the letter pi, and that's about it. when we started talking about space, there was a bond there that i did not share with any other community around the world. even though we were sworn enemies in the cold war, we alone embarked on that grandest of adventures to explore space. there was a comrade, a kinship even though we did not speak the same language, but i felt it,

and it was deep. it was in the culture. it was temper of our interaction. i'll never forget the feeling that i had being in their presence, and in the gift shop, were all these trinkets up spired by space achievements. one of my offices is a set of dolls, normally, what do you find on them? a sequence of heads of state usually, where some people you don't recognize, all right, and this set of dolls? it had russian spacecraft. the biggest of which? the international space station. they are our partners, and the littlest of which was? sputnik, of course. the cutest set of dolls you ever seen, so cute. [laughter] they said i'm tired of looking

at his face on my doll. give me technology, the frontier of space. in brussels we meet a coordinative set of the european union's representatives because they are getting together to explore space together and embark on space adventures together. one of the issues was we were perfecting our gps. yes, it was a military funded project, but once it was part of our commerce, then it -- the ownership, in a way, just kind of shifted from the military to the public. all right. our planes are equipped with gps. gps receivers so find their way around the world. europe was planning a competing system to the gps system called galileo, and it's extremely

expensive to do this. we're there, and this is the aerospace commission, and we said, well, use our gps. what's the matter? oh, we want to build our own. our worry was that if they build it, then they'll require every one of our airplanes to be equipped with their galileo receivers upping the cost of equipping our airplanes which was already in the bad economic state. we're at the table. i remember the guy sitting across from me. he was kind of smug because we were saying we want you to use this, and they were just.cc this on their own. we were almost begging actually because we had economic issues that we had to protect, and this guy, he was just kind of smug there. i think his chair might have been higher than mine, you know? you know how sometimes people do that, you know? [laughter] i had an epiphany that moment. i said to myself, i am angry.

i am pissed off. not because this guy was smug, but because here is an industry, here is an enterprise that we and the russians pioneered, and we're sitting at a table bargaining as though it's soybeans, as though it's some kind of trade regulation that we have to resolve, and i said, i'm not -- i don't have experience in this state of mind as an american, certainly not with regard to technology. i grew -- we grew up in a time when america led the world in technology, and when you lead the world, you never find yourself at a bargaining table begging for somebody to -- no. you're so far ahead of the

world, they don't even know how to sit at the table with you. that's the america i grew up in, and for me to bear witness to this exchange, i was angry with america because we had lost our way. we were coasting on the investments of a previous generation. coasting. when you coast, you eventually slow down and stop. you can coast for awhile, and you think everything's going well because there's still the time delay between innovations and when they reveal themselves economically in another. i was angry. meanwhile, i come back to america, and i try to share some of these ideas with people, and everyone is talking about the saturn5. now i love that, don't get me wrong. i have a saturn 5 tie which i

did not wear today. i wore a different one today. [laughter] that's okay. six of you like my tie. i have about a hundred ties, and this is just one of them. any time people talked about space, they kept referencing the golden era of space. i don't have a problem with that except another revelation observation came upon me. have you seen the saturn five up close? there's like four of them. one is standing vertically in huntsville, alabama where the is saturn five was invented. actually, they have two. how greedy of them. one stands vertically, and it's a model, and the other is in captivity in a museum space where each segment was -- is an actual rocket part.

segments that would have been flown had we continued makeing this beyond ato -- apollo 17. you have the pieces separated so you can stand between them and observe them. there's one in florida, there's one in houston, and alabama. there's a total of four. you go visit the saturn 5 rockets, and you just can't believe it. you look at one of the engine nozzles out of the 5 at the base, and an injen big enough to have a tea party for five in a single nozzle, and you walk the length of it, and it's 32 stories long, 32 stories tall, and them you see the capsule at the top where the three astronauts were. this is the famous rocket equation manifest large, the rocket equation that tells you that for every sort of little bit of payload you want to put

up, you need that much more fuel to launch the fuel that you have not burned yet. [laughter] okay? so this rapidly runs from you, and your spaceships have to get exponentially large, depending on the size of nor payload. that's why the rocket is 31 stories of fuel, four story of astronaut and lunar lander. here we are reflecting in front of the piece of hardware saying, damn, look at how we did it back then, my gosh. revelation number four, why m areflecting in front of the rocket? it's the first rocket ever to leave low earth outer -- orbit and go someplace. we did it how many times? eight times. apollo 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15,

16, and 17. oh, and 9. we did it ten times. it went to the moon, landed on the surface, and went back down. now, if you're that astronaut, i would have said, houston, i can't hear you. [laughter] oh, no, you're breaking up, okay. we got to land. [laughter] where was i before i interrupted myself? [laughter] thank you. reflects on the saturn 5, the first spaceship to take people out of lower earth orbit and go somewhere. i said, well, is there any piece of technology that you can name where you are reflects in front of the first version of it

wondering how they did it? the first cell phone. [laughter] are you saying, wow, look at that. i wonder how they did that. [laughter] the first television. it's a little circle this big. the first computer was half the size of this room. you say, yeah, put it in a museum, but i don't want to do that. every form of technology there ever was has the decades move on, the first version of it looks more and more quantity -- quaint until you dust it off, put it in a museum and forget about it, and yet we are still cherishing the saturn 5 robert, rocket that's 45 years old, and so i knew something else was wrong with america. if you keep praising the first of something, it meant nothing came after it. more evidence that we stopped

dreaming. we stopped exploring. what happens? the apollo era ends, 1971, apollo 17, the last of the apollo missions to the moon. oh, by the way, if science really matteredded to nasa, i mean, how many scientists would have gone? we would have had scientists on every mission, wouldn't we have? we didn't. one scientist went to the moon. harrison scmidt, and that was the last mission to the move. let's not kid ourselves. kennedy's speech, 1961, six weeks after going into orbit and came back safely, we didn't have a vehicle that wouldn't kill an astronaut going into spaes, and john f. kennedy stands up in his address in may 25th, 1961 and

says we're going to put a man on the moon and return him safely to earth. we collectively cleansed our memory of that era and of that speech. in the cleansing, we think of kennedy as a visionary. as a charismatic leader who dreams of space like the rest of us, and some of that rhetoric around that part of the speech. he talks about exploring space, and the value of that to mankind. back then, it was okay to say "mankind". it was 1961. [laughter] go two paragraphs earlier in that same speech. what's he say there? how about that? i'll tell you what -- by the way, florida kennedy space center, there's a bust of him right in the front entraps, and there's a granite wall behind

him with the speech of him saying we'll put a man on the moon and bring him safely back to earth. it's right there. two photographs earlier, if the events of recent weeks, indirectly referencing, if they are indication of the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere, then we must show the world the path of freedom over the path of tyranny. it was a battle cry against communism. that's the war driver that led to the check writing that created the nasa centers and garnered the fraction of the federal budget that getting to the moon required. why suspect that part of the speech on the granite wall in kennedy space center? plenty of room there. i checked. [laughter] you could even summarize and

say, kill the commies, go to the moon. [laughter] it would fit just fine. [applause] that's part of the delusional thinking that goes on. when we stopped going to the moon, upon learning, essentially, that russia is not getting to the moon. russia's not going to get there. they stopped their moon program. by the way, russia beat us in prakically every space achievement until then. first satellite in orbit, first woman in outer, first black person in orbit, first space docking, first space station. go down the list. in fact, how else do we remember ourselves back then? as space pioneers?

no. practically every decision we made regarding space was in reaction to something the soviet union did or in reaction to something they said they were going to do. we didn't lead any of those achievements. we trailed them. another delusional point from that era. so now we stopped going to the moon. the space enthusiast say, oh, we need another leader here and now to continue this because mars is in reach. let's keep going to mars. no. there's no reason to go to mars. russia's not going to mars. [laughter] the whole program ends. it just ends. people are looking for things to blame other than the fact that the soviet union did not commit to the moon. it's that simple. really.

i promise. let's go forward a little further. 1989, july 20th, the steps of the air as space museum in washington, d.c.. george herbert walker bush, president of the united states, uses this auspicious moment to stand on the steps of that auspicious -- of that -- one of the greatest museums on earth, the museum of the national air and space museum, on the 20th anniversary of the apollo landing. he says, we will build a space station and a colony on the moon and go on to mars. he wanted to give like a kennedy speech. in his speech is there is war driver? no. he just took the glowing rhetoric part. he referenced columbus and

discovery is in our genes as humans and americans. he went down that path, that delusional path. he went down, and so he says, let's do this. it'll take 30 years, but let's do this. folks at johnson space center costed out the plan. half a trail -- trillion dollars. it was doa in congress. half a trillion, so we didn't do it. people then say he didn't have the charisma of kennedy. he had an auspicious occasion. he didn't have the charisma, they say. it's got nothing to do with charisma. what happened in 1989? peace broke out in europe! that's what happened in 1989. you want to do a half trillion project, and you're not even at war? who are you kidding?

what he was missing was not kennedy's charisma, which that may be true, but that's not what interfered with anybody following his plan. not only that, nasa's budget in constant dollars to compare this accurately was $17 billion a year. mental-- multiply that by 30 years, and you have a half a trillion. the half a trillion was already in the flow of money into nasa, and to say it cost half a trillion, we can't afford it, that's a lie. that's how much money you're going to give nasa in 30 years anyway. all this delusional thinking is going on out there. the original title of this book submitted to the publisher was

"failure to launch." [laughter] "the dreams and delusions of space enthusiast." [laughter] they said, no, no, no, it's too depressing and can't have the word "failure" in the title because that was just be bad. [laughter] let me try to wrap up here because i'm just ranting now. if i keep at this, i'll be bleeding from my eyes, all right? [laughter] [applause] don't get me started. all right. in the decade of the 60s, that was arguably the most turbulent decade in american history since the civil war, 100 years earlier. there was a cold war. there was a hot war. we lost a hundred servicemen a week. we had been southeast asia, vietnam, of course. there was assassinations.

the civil rights movement unfolding weekly on the evening news. campus unrest, protests, students -- people getting arrested. the one shining beacon of that decade was the apollo program. the end of 1968, apollo 8, the first mission to leave lower earth orbit, did a figure 8 loop around the moon. coming around the backside of the moon, one of the astronauts picked up the camera, saw the beautiful lunar landscape, pulled it up to take a photo, and there arose earth. earth. as never before seen by human eyes. that picture called earth rise is one of the most recognized

pictures there ever was. earth rise. i have a gripe with the title because, of course -- [laughter] relative to earth, the moon do you want rotate. it always shows a face towards us, which means earth is always in the sky from the near side of the moon. earth doesn't rise on the moon. it's either never there or always there, all right? [laughter] it leads people to think that earth rises on the moon like the moon rises on earth. it rose on the moon because they're moving around the moon, all right? when you do that, stuff comes up that don't belong, that's not supposed to come up, all right? what else happened in the 1960s? people dreamed about tomorrow. you didn't have to go long, folks old enough in here to remember, you go a week at most, there's an article in "life"

magazine and "time" magazine talking about the look of tomorrow, the home of tomorrow, transportation of tomorrow. notice we never got the flying cars? okay, i'm angry about that, but nonetheless, we were dreaming. we were imagining a tomorrow, and who would enable that tomorrow but scientists and technology gists and engineers. they are the enablers of tomorrow's dreams. that was understood in that decade. we actually had an innovation decade. what do you think the world fair was all about right here in fleshing meadow? it was about tomorrow. 1964, we're on the way to the moon in 1964. the gemini program is testing pieces of the moon voyage, one by one, each mission more ambitious than the next. 1964 was all about tomorrow. the unisphere has three rings

around it. where did they get that idea? john glenn's three outers -- orbits around the earth. space was inspiring a nation to dream about tomorrow. it was inspiring innovation. steve jobs and bill gates were a 14 and 13 -- i got it written here, let me -- 13 and 14 when we landed on the moon. i submit to you that in spite of the moon voyage being driven with military motives, that the return on that investment is huge economically, and i'm not talking about spinoffs. i could, but i'm not. i love spinoffs. we love spinoffs, okay. there's great spinoffs from

nasa, and among them is the capacity to perform lasik surgery accurately and inexpensively. lasik predates nasa, but it was expensive and didn't always work. the algorithms and laser guidance that enabled the space shuttle to dock with the space station accurately without bumping and having to try it four times, that got ported to lasik. how many of you had lasik surgery? wow, only one person in the whole place? [laughter] she's not wearing glasses. and, you know, of course, tang predates nasa, but it became a beverage of choice for them to this day, i know not why. [laughter] the point is, you know, if you're into spinoffs, every year, every couple of years, nasa has a spinoff book.

each product that was patented because of space motivation that became a product is described here in every one of these volumes. this is 2009. i think there's been some since then. it's beautifully composed and written. there's interesting ones. there's a device that enables deaf people to here and low tech solutions like groved pavement. see turns on highways with groves? nasa figured out that's a good thing to do. [laughter] why didn't anybody else think about it? they were not motivated to do so. [laughter] someone says i don't want the shuttle skipping down the runway, the shuttle does not have propulsion on the runway as it lands. it's a glider, and so you want that stuff to be straight and not slide off. people thinking about this because they care about the shuttle that went into space more than they care about your

car. that's an important fact here. so, yes, there are spinoffs, and they go on and on, and in the book, i have a paragraph carefully composed where i talk about sneaking into your room at night and removing everything from your home that was up spired directly or indirectly by space technologies, and you'd wake up a technology popper in a deep state of poverty, technology poverty with bad eyesight to boot. [laughter] you'll go out and get rained upon because you would not have gotten an accurate weather forecast. i claim this was not even the best reason to do it. dare i say science has never caused any governments to spend huge sums of money. there's a radar level below which we'll pay for science.

hubbell telescope kissed that boundary, and we can do that, and the wealth of the nation determines how much science they agree to do. above that level? it takes multiple years to fund it, and the check writing agencies, the check writeing political entities, the interest to do it has to survive changes in political leadership and fluxuations in the economy. that's why if i say let's go to mars to do science, if there's a down turn in the economy, the press goes to the unemployment line, and the person says i can't feed my family, and my house has been fore closed, and the reporter says, but we're going to mars, it doesn't play well. that's why only two driver work. the i don't want to die driver, and the i don't want to die poor driver, okay?

[laughter] i claim that in the 1960s not only did nasa innovate because you have to to have a frontier, but we created for ourselves an innovation culture. steve jobs and bill gates did not end up working for nasa. they ended up innovating though, okay? it's a culture of innovation. you are inventing tomorrow. ..

we are going to the backside of the men. we are going to stop that asteroid. by the way there might be geopolitical reasons to go into space. i'm not going to debate that. there could be future touristic reasons, scientific reasons. there could be exploitive reasons for going into space. maybe you want to mine the moon. i assert that if you create a healthy space, space platform, where you strap rockets and whatever you need for the task at hand, you don't make a destination driven load here. i'm not going to just say let's go to mars and then you get to mars and then what? if you are laying out the interstate system in the united states you don't say let's only go to l.a.. that's not how you do it. you put roads everywhere and people choose where they want to go and when they want to go for whatever reason they come up

with. for me a healthy space krogh ram is that as one that you can choose to go anywhere. it could be military reasons, economic reasons, whatever reasons that confront us. alright, so now. when you innovate, and it's writ large, you have grand epic adventures that echo through the educational pipeline. how might it do it? i stand up in front of an eighth-grade class and i say, who wants to be an aerospace engineer? so that you can design a plane that is 10% more fuel-efficient than the one your parents flew. that is one scenario. who wants to be an aerospace engineer, so that you can design an airplane that can navigate the rarified atmosphere of mars? i will be getting the best students in the class.

not everybody cares about such missions. we want them to, but that is not how you get smart people to express their smarts. we tell ourselves we live in a free country. a smart person is interested in whatever they are interested in. they ought to be able to do that has when they do, everybody benefits. there is all this talk, why get advances this roundabout way? let's put the money directly where the problem is. no, it doesn't work that way. if you walk into a hospital with a ledger, make a list of every machine in that hospital with an on/off switch. every machine that is brought into the service of diagnosing the condition of your body without cutting you open. you will learn that every one of those machines is based on a principle of physics discovered by a physicist who had no interest in medicine.

right on back to x-rays themselves. the very first nobel prize in physics went to him. that nobel prize was not in physiology. it was in physics. its physiological applications were manifest immediately of course. i see my bones on a photographic plate. take it over to the hospital. go for it. i am going to get the next thing going here in my lap, right? so you unique medical technologist to create these machines, the cross-pollination of disciplines. the entire radiology department of a hospital is based on nuclear physics. the magnetic resonance imager, probably the most useful machine in the hospital today is based on a principle called nuclear magnetic resonance. it's got the other n word,

nuclear. so they remove it from a hospital device because it people. here, get into this nuclear machine. get into this magnetic resonance imager. oh i'm fine, okay. [laughter] based on the principles discovered by a physicist to happen to be in my college physics professor. basically he was doing astrophysics concerning himself with the behavior of an atomic nuclei and the intracellular medium, it enters cellular. so you want to fund all the fun tiers of science. now how are you going to motivate that? all i'm saying is when you go into space everybody knows about it. if you just fund the national science foundation, those same kids in the eighth-grade class. has anyone every stood up and said when i grow up i want to be an nsf researcher? i have never seen that, i'm

sorry. that they have heard of nassau, so has the rest of the world. so i see a healthy nasa. right now it is a half a penny in your tax dollars. did you know that? 100% of everyone who tells me, why are we spending money up there and not down here? we are spending too much up there. 100% of them did not know that nasa's budget is 1/2 of 1% of their tax dollars. and i have measured this out. you can take a dollar bill and cut it horizontally 1/2 of 1% of that width. it doesn't even get you into the tank. [laughter] it doesn't even get you into the ink. [applause] so, double it. then we can go to mars in a big way, yes.

we can check that asteroid that has us in our sights and we can go back to the moon and yes but a colony on the moon, just because gingrich is republican doesn't mean he doesn't have an okay idea about this. what might be the motivation? it could be economic. whatever is the reason. if you are advancing a friend here you innovate and when you innovate new advanced things that drive tomorrow's economies because right now america is sliding backwards. the rest of the world is passing us by. we are practically, we are never session. jobs are going overseas. there are not enough scientists in the pipeline. everybody wants to put a mandate on each problem. jobs going overseas? let's change the tears and give tax incentives so that companies will want to keep their jobs here. we need more scientists? let's make better science teachers. okay, and here are all these mandates going around.

if you double nasa's budget and we go into space writ large across the newspapers, we resurrect the innovation culture that travails -- prevailed 20 years ago. nobody today is thinking about tomorrow. nobody's thinking about a world's fair. i don't remember the last time i saw an article dreaming about the city of tomorrow. they all ended. do you know when they and it? after we stopped going to the moon. so i submit that a healthy nasa is a healthy america. as nasa's future goes, so too is that of america. and if nasa is healthy, then you don't need a program to convince people that science and engineering is good to do because they will see it right large on the paper.

they will be called for engineers to help us go ice fishing on your robe of where there is an ocean of water that has been liquid for billions of years. we are going to dig through the soils of mars and look for -- look at the nassau portfolio today. it's got biology, chemistry, physics, geology and planetary geology, aerospace engineers mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, all the stem fields. science technology engineering and math representative in the nasa portfolio. the healthy nasa is a flight real that society cass for innovations. i don't know of another force of nature this powerful for nasa and this next-generation weed go in because we need to stoke our economy and that is one of the two big reasons any nation has ever done anything. and i'm not so naïve as to say let's do it for science. science will piggyback it. we have done that forever.

going back to charles darwin. he hitched a ride. did he pay for that voyage? no, the boys had other motivations. science piggybacks the stuff pretty well and i'm cool with that. one last thing before i and before i end. this book came out only about two weeks ago. thank you, thank you. [applause] because what i just told you, touches on politics and on economics. what has happened is the interest in this book has crossed over and out of the

circle of space and busiest and gotten the interest of economists and politicians. to the point i think, but i'm just, i'm enchanted by this. so art affairs magazine excerpt of the first chapter of this bar a cover story. the case for space. this is the lack of every single congressman in washington. so within a week of this book being released, and this article appearing, i get a phonecall -- [laughter] i get a phonecall and they say we want you to testify in front of the senate. now generally i don't like speaking directly to politicians. [laughter] i don't mean it that in any insulting way. what i mean by that is, i am an

educator, i'm a scientist and it's my preference to speak to the electorate, to highlight, to inform, to educate, to eliminate and that way you choose the representatives that you can in the best interest of your communities. for me to go straight to a politician who is representing a million people for an entire state, i'm not comfortable doing that. so i testify. my testimony is six minute testimony and i say i don't know if anybody is listening. it ended up on youtube. for the past week it has had 200,000 hits. so i realize in some of the comments are very moving. people said they almost started crying, because i am appealing to, i'm appealing for all of us to dream about tomorrow again and i don't know another force that will enable that.

but the pathway that i just described. so i would like to believe that what is happening is something deep within us all, that wants to, wants tomorrow to come again and will certainly enjoy the economic benefits that come from it. because it shifts our vision from worrying about where your jobs are to creating the jobs that issue forth from innovations, jobs that are high-level jobs that are are so indicated, they can't go overseas because they haven't figure out how to do it yet. that is the state of the country that i want to enter. [applause] [laughter] i just like messing with the sound people.

actually can i have a little more volume? a little more? more. thank you. this is the only part of the book i'm going to read verbatim lee and i will end with this, with your permission. i wrote this in the spring of 2008. dear nasa, happy birthday. perhaps you didn't know, but we are the same age. in the first week of october, 1958, you were born of the national aeronautics and space and civilian space agency. while i was born of my mother in the east bronx. [applause] so the year-long celebration of

our golden anniversary, which began the day after we both turned 49 regards me a unique occasion to reflect on our past, present and our future. i was three years old when john glenn first orbited the earth. i was eight when the lost astronauts and the tragic fire in the apollo 1 capsule on the launchpad. i was 10 when he landed armstrong and aldrich and i was 14 when you stop going to the moon altogether. over that time i was excited for you and for america, but the vicarious thrill of the journey so prevalent in the hearts and minds of others was absent from my emotions. i was obviously too young to be an astronaut but i also knew that my skin color was much too dark to picture me as part of that adventure.

not only that, even though you are a civilian agency or most celebrated astronauts were military pilots at a time when war was becoming less and less popular. during the 1960's the civil rights movement was more real to me then it surely was to you. in fact it took a directive from vice president johnson in 1963 to force you to hire black engineers at your your press tisch's marshall spaceflight center in huntsville alabama. i found the correspondents in your archives. james webb row two german rocket pioneer werner von braun who headed the center and was the chief engineer of the entire man's space program. the letter boldly and bluntly directs von braun to address the lack of equal employment opportunities for black people

and to collaborate with the area colleges alabama a&m and tuskegee to identify, train and recruit qualified black engineers into the nassau -- nassau family. in 1964 you and i had not turned six when i saw picketers outside the newly built apartment complex of our choice in the riverdale section of the bronx. they were protesting to prevent families mine included from moving. i'm glad their efforts failed. these buildings were called or haps prophetically the sky view apartments on who's worth 22 stories above the bronx i would later train my telescope on the universe. my father was active in the civil rights movement, working under new york city's bayer to create job opportunities for youth in the ghetto as the inner city was called back then.

year after year the forces operating against us were huge. poor schools, bad teachers abject racism and assassinated leader so while you were celebrating her monthly your monthly of basses of space exploration for mercury to gemini to -- i was watching america do all it could to marginalize who i was and what i wanted to become in life. i look to you for guidance, for a vision statement that i could adopt to fuel my ambitions but you weren't there for me. of course i shouldn't blame you for society's woes. your conduct was a symptom of america's habits, not a cause. but it should nonetheless know that among my colleagues, i am the only one of my generation who became an astrophysicist in spite of your achievements in space, rather than that cause of them.

for my inspiration i instead turned to libraries, books on the cosmos from bookstores and my rooftop telescope, and the planetarium. after some fits and starts through my years in school where becoming an astrophysicist seemed at times to be the path of most resistance, i became a professional scientist. i became an astrophysicist. is there for decades that followed, you have come a long way, including most recently the presidential initiate a congressionally endorsed vision statement that finally gives us out of lower orbit. it does not recognize the value of this adventure to our nation's future. it soon will as the rest of the developed and developing world passes us by and every measure of technological economic strength. not only that, today you are much more like america, from the senior level managers to your most decorated astronauts.

congratulations. you now belong to the entire citizenry. examples of this abound but i especially remember in 2004 when the public took ownership of the whole ball -- hubble telescope. they all spoke loudly, ultimately reversing the threat that the telescope might not need service to extend its life another decade. hubble's transit in images have spoken to us all as to the personal profiles of the space shuttle astronauts who deployed your service and the scientists that benefited from its datastream. not only that, i have even joined the ranks of your most trusted. i served dutifully under your advisory council. i came to recognize that when you are at your best, nothing in this world can inspire the dreams of a nation the way you

can. dreams carried by a river of ambitious students eager to become scientists, engineers and technologists in the service of the greatest quest there ever was. you have come to represent a fundamental part of america's identity. not only to itself but to the world. so, now that we have those turned 49, and we are well into our 50th orbit around the sun, i want you to know that i feel your pain's and share your joys. and i look forward to seeing you back on the mend, but don't stop there. marrs beckons as to destinations beyond. birthday buddy -- [laughter] even if i have not always been, i am now your humble servant. thank you.

[applause] [applause] [applause] [applause] >> i am sorry we ran a little long, but i wanted to devote some time to your questions. we have a microphone right at the front of each aisle and i welcome comments about anything or everything that has been bugging you were eating you or

critical or supportive. let's start here. are talking about education automatically once people get more involved with the space program and sciences but there seems to be a movement in this country to suppress education. you have got the state legislature saying that education is in an investment in the future but some sort of program for welfare and they are cutting back on education aid at the same time universities are cutting engineering and sciences because they are more expensive. you have a presidential candidate says going to colleges is only for snobs and the only thing you learn theirs to be brainwashed by liberal professors. in new jersey of a governor who's taking apart teachers -- coast be i think we get the point. [laughter] >> cutting back education and using the money to give tax benefits to billionaires. what's going on and what can we do about it and place is

happening? you would think that people look for the future not to destroy. >> that is why i try not to speak to politicians. you heard the question. of movement that is kind of anti-intellectual and anti-education which is even worse. and worse for the fate of the nation whose economic health and security depends on innovation that could derive from being educated. and so, my sense of this is, what we need to do is to compel the nation itself to want to become educated, to want to go into space, to recognize that there is economic value to that exercise and once it becomes part of what we want for ourselves, it is has been a fundamental part in dimension of who our elected officials are. we don't have to wait for him one official to the next to see

you as an education idea. it is our idea. i will give you an example. i have been asked, what were you do if you were head of nasa? i don't want to be head of nasa, do you know why? because the head of nasa reports to the present and hands nasa a budget and that is what you have to spend. i kind of like the fact that if i'm not in the command chain of the president, i'm just a citizen, that means the president works for me. and under those conditions -- no. [applause] you can motivate, not just me, all of us. under those conventions you motivate the electorate to demand that which is in the best interest of this nation and to the extent that we fail at that, our leaders will fail. >> how do you get past this well-paid propaganda of anti-education? you just can't get news coverage. >> i am happy to say that

before -- there or for youtube videos of me, one that went by role in the last few days with 2 million views that is celebrating what there is to know about space. it's a measure of the appetite the people that people have for this adventure, and i tweet, tweet creepy weird things sometimes, but i tweet. and every tweet resonates with people, not every tweet that many tweet resonate aced on their followers so i have like 360,000 twitter followers and it's not just because i smile at them. it is because there is something that they are eating that i'm feeding them and i am feeding them the universe. there is a cosmic appetite out there that remains to be fully serves and i am just a piece of that puzzle. and there are others among them, others among my ilk out there,

brian cox in the u.k.. [applause] he is more popular in the u.k. then carl sagan ever was here in america. there is in fact hope for this world and it's representative by the electorate, not by our elected officials. [applause] in my humble opinion. >> good evening. the way i see it, the 20th century belongs to america and russia as well as space exploration and now that i look at the international space station i see that is one effort where there has been some collaboration at the international level. you talk a lot about the economy being motivations for a country to do it alone but what about comprehension globally, where china, india, japan, russia and america, we don't all going the same direction but come together to do something, a grand vision so to speak and they think it's me kenya very big skeptic of the

u.n. and how the international -- functions but is there some hope for is? >> the international space station is the greatest collaboration of nations other than the waging of war. in terms of the size, the scale, the investment, the number of nations that participate so it is quite a model for the cooperation of space as we go forward. but i'm reminded of this scene in the film 2010 which ostensibly was a sequel to 2001, where the russians and americans collaborating in space trying to find life on jupiter during the cold war and there is some cold war incidents at an embassy or an allied country, and it gets really ugly and nuclear weapons, the silos are opened. and it gets so bad they have to empty each other's embassies from their respective countries.

and up comes the phonecall on jupiter and it says the russians have to leave the american ship and the americans have to leave the russians shipped week as we are having these problems down here on earth. that is just stupid, okay? and you know that is how it would happen, because politics are driving all of this. so i would like to believe that collaboration keeps nations at peace with each other and since we are being economically driven in this idea, rather than militaristic likud and then everybody could have a piece of that pie. all the nations of the world's thumb of which are in a greater need of an economic boost than even we are. so i agree in the context of economic growth it would need a boon to everyone. >> high dr. tyson. i have a real estate question.

>> real estate or realistic? >> real estate. i'm a real estate -- new york city resident. >> i see have no idea where this question is going. no idea. [laughter] >> as it pertains to sea level rise, i feel more comfortable knowing that neil degrasse tyson is the co-president of new york city. >> so that i can drown alongside you. [laughter] >> so if i were looking to buy an apartment right now, would you advise against the ground-level apartment? what floor would you say i should be looking at for the minimum? >> i would advise that you -- [laughter] here is the problem. we now live in a culture. this is so not the sixties in this regard. we now live in a culture where a disaster is impending and the first people, the first thing people think of is run.

or, buy up the toilet paper. clear out the water from the shelves. the hurricane is coming. the tornado is coming. hide. if you are surrounded by scientists and engineers that is not their first reaction. their first reaction, how can i stop this? how can i deflect it? how can i prevent this from ever happening again? so what i would like to see is an investment in gl engineering. how about that? do you know where that would come? the people among us who want to tear up mars. turn mars into an oasis and we can all just live there. if you have the power to geo- engineer earth you can control sea level on earth like it's a trivial homework set, homework problem for school. so i try not to wear and away from problems. i see them as interesting

challenges to solve, and so why not view this as an occasion to solve the problem of the melting icecaps rather than to distract herself with what apartment to buy to avoid it? [applause] >> hello dr. tyson. you said economic incentives is one of the main drivers of exploration in space. i was wondering if you could see it corporations being at the forefront as opposed to the governments of the world? >> that will never happen, ever. another delusional point that i make in the book. let corporations do it. even newt gingrich, while he is pandering as politicians do regionally, to this space community of florida, where you find kennedy space center. let's get corporations up there.

no, no. this is important. you are seated except for the people lined up. but if something is expensive, which space exploration is, if something is dangerous, which space exploration is, if something has been measured risks, which space exploration is, it cannot be done by private enterprise because you cannot create a capital market valuation of it. i am just saying, the way it works is i am looking for investors. what is the return on my investment? here is the risk, here is the cost and here's the rate of return. you cannot do that for something that expensive and dangerous that you have never done before. you cannot get investors for that. you could never have gotten investors for that.

columbus was paid by governments he drew the maps, he found out where the tradewinds were. he found out where the hostile folks are when he landed and where the happy folks are. he found out where the wood supply was to fix his boat. then he goes back, the maps are understood and then comes the india trading company. the railroads are across the country. somebody had to acquire that land. it was called the government. somebody had to figure out where the good indians were in the bad indians were. someone had to figure out where the mountains and valleys were. that started with thomas jefferson and lewis and clark. and other expeditions that went out there. you draw the maps, then private enterprise comes. so, what world could private enterprise play? the risks are assessed and the

dangers are understood. that would be lower orbit. it is still dangerous but we understand the danger and we can quantify it. to pay a private enterprise to take us to a space station, i don't have a problem with that. let ivan enterprise take tourists into orbit. i don't have a problem with that. let it happen. we live in a free-market society. free market should markets should go wherever and investment pays a return and that includes space, let it be so but it is my read of the history of human conduct tells me it will never be the frontier of space. that will always need to be reserved for the wisdom of governance. [applause] >> hi, two-part question. one is the stuff they were

talking about where space travel to go and what they could do, that is really awesome. what happened to all that stuff that was happening? part two, backside. >> do you mean why did we stop dreaming? >> part two, he wanted to work for nasa. he spent 10 years, math, physics, good at it, talented. dena what he wants to do now? in math teacher which is not a bad thing. but we are losing all that drive. are going to give up that whole generation? >> it's not good enough just to have a better science teacher in the classroom because when the science teachers gone because you move on to the next year, maybe a flame was lit that something has to stand aflame. occasionally have to reignited. anyone who barbecues knows, so as you move forward if there is a grand vision there, it becomes self driven. >> what do we do with this

generation of kids who have had the wind taken out of their sails who heard no more space travel? >> i would not say the wind is out of the sails, the rocket fuel is out of the launch vehicles. we are just a lost generation in that regard. that is the grim reality of it. there is no polite way to put it. but they are very hira bowl. they just won't be working in the fields of which they were trained. and specifically in those fields were which they had ambition to work. that is the lost generation of americans in the 21st century. have a nice day. [laughter] sorry. >> hi, i just wanted to expound on your war and wealth hypothesis. i think it's the wise mission, the one where they map of the killer asteroids. >> many missions have the capacity to map killer asteroids

>> so then that actually, because what you said, that might be a driver to have actually knock one out. >> is a defense project about level. well we are visiting the solar system which now becomes our backyard, oh there is a master at coming. strap on this combination of rockets and take it out. i don't want the reason to fund this space per-gram tb so that we can deflect an asteroid. because once we inventory them all and we find out the next one that we have in -- the next one goes away. great spin-offs. you get spin-offs. i am not arguing the spin-offs. they are only spin-offs but these are not the spin-offs i'm talking about. i'm talking about the effect on

a culture where everyone wants to innovate whether or not they are in a space program. that is the real economic driver. >> you don't think saving the world this? >> it will quadruple nasa funding and then we get a bastion -- better measurement to the asteroid. just as it did after we landed on the moon. that is the wrong starter motivation to get a healthy space program. it will work but it will be a one off. >> is that not a bridge too far? >> the problem is our data on asteroids are on time feels longer than the re-election time of our representatives. [applause] 88% of congress runs for re-election every two years. 88% of senators and congressmen are on the block every two years and i say there's an asteroid that is going to come in 100

years? i am not going there. it will work when the time comes, fine. but you know it might not work because if we don't do space between now and then it might be too late to start a new pro-grant to make that happen. and you know something? if we go extinct by an asteroid that had a space program available to us, to have the collected it, we would be the laughingstock of aliens in the galaxy. [laughter] they have opposable thumbs and they had a space program? and they went extinct? like the peep range dinosaurs before them? they had an excuse. they didn't have opposable thumbs. i would take a few more questions. i love the hat, by the way. >> my question is, it seems to me that competition is what kind

of drove the competition between the united states and the competition between the soviet union and communism. there doesn't seem to be -- there doesn't seem to be -- there is no competition now. >> so the question is back then we ran competition, for sure. it was a military context. right now with that military competition going on with china and i wouldn't quite say there is a military conflict there but i can tell you this. i have actually fantasized about this, getting back to the military driver. i wanted to go visit the heads of state of china and whisper to them. [laughter] i need you to leak a memo. it doesn't even have to be true. just leaked a memo that says, you want to put military bases on mars. we would be on mars in two years.

do you know how easy that would be in china? mars is already red. you can market that. you got that one. so competition does fuel the fire and with regard to the collaboration on the space station, collaboration i think it's better than non-collaborating but if you see any of those other countries as your economic competitor, it may be greater incentive for you to not join with them and try to beat them. it is what humans do. we can be in denial of that but in fact it's some of the greatest drivers there ever was so i try to be honest about what it is to get the job done. here is what i will do. we will and the line with who is standing now and i'm going to give you sound bite answers. i'm going to pretend i'm on jon stewart and that way we will get through you quickly and that we

will call it a night. >> i was just -- the given a short clip answer by jon stewart a couple of days ago. my question is, granted you have gathered enough collective will of the people to get the economic driver to make this happen and get the budget going, something longer than the particular term of congress or presidents. what is the next step? you mentioned the particular destination are killing off asteroids to create a platform in which we can do anything that we dream up at that time. what is your idea or what would your proposal be for that platform? >> i am not going to prescribe the next steps that people take. that will be a function of creativity of the engineers and technologists of the day. maybe they want to build a space elevator.

it's a cheap way to get to the geosynchronous orbit and by the way if you visit our space exhibit there is a whole section on the space elevator beyond earth is the name of the exhibit, created by my colleague. so you build capacity to go anywhere and scientists decide, i need to go here and there and geopolitics as we have got to do this. the military says we have to put a laser beam over here and the tourist folks say i want to visit there. it was as run its course. as long as you are advancing at a frontier our economy gets stoked and i don't care what the destination is. i have no preference. all of space is my preference. [applause] >> hey what you ask about it colonie on the moon. i don't think i could vote for newt gingrich, but let's just say -- let's say obama was like let's do it, were going to the moon.

what are the actual realities of a moon colony in what would that entail? could we do that? >> i think of moon clop -- been colony is a little ambitious because there is no air on the moon and there is no cattle and there is no grass. it is a little ambitious i think. >> is it creepy? >> it's not crazy as queen isabella saying he here call him is go find the edge of the year. that is the sticking point right there. remember columbus could still breathe, you know? so these are challenges and maybe a moon colony won't get out because you can't get enough interest in it that there will be always silence -- science on the moon and the military view the moon as a strategic place. the new high ground which is the entire space between the earth

and the moon's orbit so there can be military reasons for doing that as well and i don't like war but i recognize that war is not a new conduct among nations and among people. and just because, people say oh let's make space, no war in space. if you are that committed, why are we having wars down here? what are you saying? if you can manage to not have war in space why not manage that down here and we fail at that badly. i'm given no reason -- i'm not even hopeful to think that there won't be back with baze space wars. i don't have that much confidence in human conduct. maybe the colonies won't but there will be plenty to do in space. maybe just a place to go, a one-week tour. >> i just want to go.

>> where do spacex fit in all this? >> spacex, they are trying to make a vehicle with the efficiency of private enterprise that will substitute for nasa vehicles to go back and forth to lower orbit. >> are they a substitute for the money that is gone to nasa or are they going to enhance a? >> nasa gets a budget and instead of having to spend more to send their own people they will just do it with private enterprise, the same way the postal service rants bali space on airplanes to move your mail. we present that when you go to private enterprise they will do it more efficiently and more intelligently, more reliably than what the government program would have done so that is the goal. spacex founded by elon musk, the writer of -- sold it to ebay for a billion dollars and he was 32 or something. one of the space billionaires who decided, he is trying to now

make his own spacecraft. how old are you? you are eight, that is so cool. [applause] is a pastor bedtime because it is so past my bedtime. i don't know what to tell you hear. >> i want to go to mars. [laughter] [applause] >> let the record show our 8-year-old wants to go to mars and no one else has asked that get themselves. >> and i was wondering what it would take to get there? >> you are at the age right now of -- in other words, when we go to mars, which i would like to think is in the next couple of decades you would then become the age of those astronauts. i am too old. i may be dead by then. but you, you will be just right.

so the urge to want to go to mars is just right for an 8-year-old. so, it's dangerous. you would be a long time away from home, so probably you will want to get, take some videos with you and some books and nasa puts a lot of effort into making the space journey very much feel at home, so you get to still have an e-mail account and you get to make phonecalls and video calls with your friends and nasa is talking to you all the time. so it's a long voyage and there are still some challenges. there is radiation from the sun and we don't yet know how to shield you from it but i that i see those as engineering albums, not physic problems and we have a lot of very clever engineers out there. it is nine months to mars and then you have to wait until earth and mars line back up into orbit to come back, so that is a couple of years. the whole round-trip is about three or four years. he will be three or four years

away from home so as long as you were okay with that, we will send you to mars to sign up. [applause] >> she gives me hope that my question for you dr. tyson is how can we get our sons and daughters who are so wrapped up in technology that they do nothing else. they don't create and they don't have passion. they just pay on facebook and answer their telephones. [applause] [laughter] >> so, the problem is not that they are looking down on technology. the problem is we are not engaged in a project that is grand enough to compel them to look up. that is the challenge. [applause] can i give you an example? i said i would be quick on this but i'm i am not being quick. do you know what tweet ups are? in the twitterverse, companies or agencies have a launch and you invited certain number of

people who are active on twitter and you give lectures to them and they are tweeting everythine learns about what is going on vicariously. i had one of the national launch escape at talk to the tweet of community. do you know what i said? this is the biggest test of my life. i want to be so compelling in my delivery to this audience that they will not even want to tweet me because it will distract them from what i am saying on the stage. and so i started speaking and i reserved my best. it is going and nobody is looking down at their device, because what was coming out from up here was a greater message that anything they could have possibly been doing on their smartphones. so don't blame the technology, blame the absence of a vision. [applause]

>> hi. i have a philosophical question. would you rather die now or live forever? [laughter] >> i kind of body into the concept of a natural life. so, so philosophers like having those kinds of debates, but i never believed that the options available word to create a person are ever limited by the choices offered by a philosopher. [applause] so for example there is the lifeboat and there are only a certain amount of food for six people so they throw them overboard. otherwise everyone dies. or do you eat them? so these choices and i am saying maybe we can invent a way to draw fish from the ocean, so we

don't have to throw them overboard. i like solutions to problems rather than the blunt do a or b and part of this i think is because we grew up in a multiple-choice school system. sometimes answers exist beyond the choices that you have thought up as the person who wrote the exam. so that is perhaps my unfulfilling answer to you. [applause] >> indy, and that is why we don't have a hashtag for tonight event so we don't get extracted by twittering about it. the early observation about the politicians talking about the need to be anti-science and anti-education is entertaining in front of video cameras with smartphones. which wouldn't exist had they had their way. >> this is part of the hypocrisy of it all. especially to people who say, i

don't need the space program. i don't need that to know. i have my gps to my weather channel so why do i need to spend money on space? you get a lot of that going on. >> the big expensive states are the big rockets, which is really world war ii technology. they have been looking seriously at antigravity just like in the early hg wells, from earth to the moon or whatever. >> earth to them in. >> among their propulsion research going on it does not include antigravity. antigravity is a pretty remote notion with respect to the laws of physics. and so you don't find people who are physics fluent, ready to devote their lives on antigravity. the people who tend to do anti-gravity are people who

think that the laws of physics are only guidelines rather than laws. and so this is the same community who would do for example perpetual motion machines. it violates known and tested laws of physics. okay maybe you will succeed but i'm so confident you won't, that i'm just going to go about my way. so don't expect a lot of money to be devoted to antigravity devices but nonetheless there are other challenges in propulsion. there is the ion drive and you are absolutely right. it is world war ii propulsion technology and we are so far behind that is an embarrassment. by tweeted recently and i said, what did i say? i said the state of the country now is that i would be embarrassed if an alien landed. i would just be embarrassed to show them what our technology

is. if you want to do a one-upsmanship on the alien? i have nothing for you aliens, i'm sorry, go find some other planet to show your stuff. hello, yes. you have to make a quick because we are running along. >> thank you. a long list of favorites, what a nasa reality show be more important than the jersey shore? >> thank you for this -- my pr agent is here. she's a thank you for the index that is very rich and fleshed out. also since i tweeted on the universe often and on space i have tossed in many of those tweets for the book. they are kind of like biscuits. if you have earned her way to that point i i will hand you a tweet and this one tweet, you can read it closer to the microphone. >> what a nasa reality show lynn letter sure be more popular than

jersey shore, civilly shins -- civilizations depends on that. >> a lot of effort went into this in the organization of this effort was made possible by this editor's name on the cover of this book who is my long time editor from natural history magazine. this is every thought i have ever had about her past, present and future and space and to coordinate those thoughts into something coherent requires an editor so i've want to publicly thank you for that. >> my question is, and we we are all asking questions. do you have a question to take with us for further thought? >> yes, my question for you to take that with you would be, why are you spending more energy trying to convince others of the value of the set degette venture and you can do that by letters

to the editor, op-eds, any of the above. if you have an opinion, share it so thank you for that. we have six left and we are done. >> hi there. i was kind of new to this whole space thing and i wanted to learn more. is there some kind of podcast, maybe somebody something on a sunday i can shake this thing out and perhaps engage further? >> you want to learn more about space? [laughter] >> something that i could perhaps we got to my friends. >> not everyone is a reader out there i understand. i am trying to hit every angle here. a tweet, right and i am also hosted a radio show called start talks radio. [applause] it is a little irreverent. i have a cohost and my guests are not scientists. they are people from pop-culture

and we explore ways that science influence as their lives. i recommend you check it out. i have had morgan freeman freeman and whoopi goldberg and jon stewart as guests and joan rivers. i said to john, so john what you do with aliens come? so she said, i don't care if they come, just as long as they are single and jewish. last though. [laughter] so it's a celebration of science and i'm just trying to get it out there so people do not fear it. but yes it's time to take media to be fluent because not everyone is doing the same thing at the same time as we were in the 1960's, all watching walter cronkite to tell us what the day's news was. >> to clarify it would check out start talk radio. >> start talk radio.net. thank you for that. >> i will try to make this as brief as i can.

i'm one of the lost generation you just spoke about. i'm 32 and i will be 33 this fall. i live next to vandenberg air force base with myself and my father the editor-in-chief of the local newspaper and watch the shuttle happening in my town. i have an 8-year-old daughter who sings along with your voice and others talking about it. [applause] >> a series of creative youtube videos which takes publicly available clips. it's very creative and they are hugely popular. ..

if it's the sun going said it would in 5 million years. if we stay here we are doomed, and as far as we know, we are at. >> this is the point was made by stephen hawking that we have to be a multi plant species otherwise we are doomed because something could happen, an asteroid or what have you. here is my rebuttal to that if i may. >> may i finish the question? >> yes. >> do you feel a motivation like that is valuable as a component?

the economics are part of feeding our country, part of feeding ourselves. >> i don't think it is a good enough driver because i don't believe it. and i will tell you why. and he made this point we have to be able to plant species otherwise, with all the eggs in one basket you go extinct. all right. what might be that which threatens earth is it an asteroid the size of mount everest, the one that rendered 70% of all the species 65 million years ago? the yucatan peninsula of mexico to, it wasn't mexico back then by the way. whatever the dinosaurs called it is what it was. so here's the thing. if we are going to be a multi plant species and i think we would have to reform some other planet. it would have to be mars because no one else to do with a runaway greenhouse of venus.

if we have the power to terraform mars and the technology to ship a billion people, we can deflect the astronaut. i mean, the scale of that operation relative to whatever it would take to protect us i think there is no contest. you deflect the asteroid, stop the volcano, realign the points of the earth. i don't see that as a realistic solution to the pending problem we might face. i do see the solution to the problem rather than running away from another planet so that earth can become toast. and you have to planets and the asteroid is headed to them what you do with everybody on the planet? sorry, we are the safe ones. goodbye. it's not a practical -- [laughter] if you have the power of jeal

engineering on that scale, you don't need to leave earth. you make it exactly as you want it to be. if you have the power to fix mars, you can fix earth in any way you choose. this is my contention. >> if you have the power to fix mars don't have the power to be a single outside source? >> possibly. we will go there, too but the motivation wouldn't be so that we won't dhaka on earth. i just don't see that. i'm not convinced by the argument. quick, yes. >> so, you started out with kind of the three motivators but one of them dropped out really quick. isn't the whole glorification of the kings and what not, isn't that really just fear of death and wanting to have your name in the history books alongside buzz aldrin so long as there are history books is and that's still with us? >> it can be with the individual

but you don't control that much money. >> it's not big enough for humanity. >> i'm talking about large scale projects that divert a major fraction of your gross national project to begin human capital or financial capital because you want it tombstone, the cost doesn't come in your tombstone in a pyramid are not the same thing. [laughter] so, the pyramid, yeah, they want to live forever but they have the power to do it and it is inexpensive tombstone and people did it in the surface of the faeroe. it has the power. the people who built the pyramid didn't, so it is power and is a fear factor as well. >> we are all too small. >> unless you were king. in fact our version of the king to this would be bill gates.

>> the bill and melinda gates -- >> he would be like the king spending the crown jewels to do this. i will talk to him and find out. >> i have two questions. did you celebrate one pi day yesterday? [laughter] >> i did. for those of you that are not geek the action of that sentence and, on march 14th, if you write it out in american-style it would be 3-14 and its pi day so they celebrated and in my daughter's high school she attends a high school science they have a pi day and they serve pi's and there's a contest, so it is a war geeky to do and i tweeted, there was

pressure on pi day i said i'm not out of control i've got it to the 12th decimal places and that's good enough to get the circumference of the earth to an inch, that's good enough for me would guess i did celebrate pi day. >> my second question is what are your fever three numbers? >> fever three members? i like the first three because that gets you most of the way they're in. [applause] was to make an important part of the future how is the historian important for the future? >> how is the historian important? everything i know about human conduct that we need to put into play coming forward comes to me from an analysis of history so if you don't know the conduct of humans and what motivates them

and the relationships between the nation's just, you know, go back home, you're not useful out there if you want to bring real solutions to real problems. so historians are really important in this, particularly historians who put things in context which is what most of them do rather than just retail it kind of events, the context matters come attitudes matter, culture matters, so why don't want to know just what you felt and what king replaced whom i want to know laws in the heart and mind of people who were in that country, the attitudes they have, what led one country to war for another thousand years? would lead one country to not have war what is going on in their culture and their mind so by all means when the history goes forward to this committee would be harder to find a job, but other than that -- [laughter]

>> the last two questions. the pressure is on. yes. >> i just have a quick question and a quick comment. my question is you often talk about the whole government factor of the government has to do it first and then private enterprise. >> not want it to be that way that is just my read of history. >> but do you believe to get further than the edge of the solar system we need to unify like one government, one people as humanity to get out there? >> you need another law of physics. the problem is harder than where you combine government. if you want to leave the solar system and visit the nearest star and do it on the fastest space should we ever launched and hitch a ride you would arrive at the nearest star to the sun and 50,000 years later. so you need to be really

fertile. [laughter] or we need some other way, understanding fabric of space time because travel on those time skills are incommensurate with the longevity of the human individual. so to the moon is a few days, mars is a few years that fits within our life expectancy. traveling to the other side does not. so for the moment, i'm good with a telescope to get me there and there are plenty of destinations including a new swath of doris planas, prudhoe included, get over it come and there's many of rocket surfaces that would welcome our footprint. >> i just a quick comment, i read this calvin and hobbes strip that said the way right

now we know there's intelligent life out there is that it hasn't tried to contact us yet. [laughter] and i've got to say i'm completely -- i completely agree with that. >> i said the same thing but in a more severe way. aliens have actually visited us. the two branches of the comment, one of them they've actually visited us but they landed in times square and no one noticed. so we are in hollywood and no one noticed but a more terrifying prospect is they had visited us and inspected who we and what we are and have concluded there's no sign of intelligent life on earth. i have to ask how old you are. 11. okay, welcome. is it past your bedtime? >> nope. >> you have a question?

>> in your book are they just random or are they for fun, because like in chapter 4 you are talking about aliens and say any suspicions that they will be even more reflection of our fear about how we would treat an alien species if we found them than any knowledge about how the alien species would treat us and then held in space to u.s. for 40,000 droplets so aliens are safe. then we're listening for them right now. [laughter] >> yeah, okay. i warned you about my tweets come devah? i forgot why i talked about sneezing inside a space helmet because there is there really kind of nasty thing to think about. you don't want to have a head cold while you are space walking. the tweets are just random thoughts that come to me.

i have them any way and then on a make them a tweet. another 1i have is if humans, if our blood were based not on iran turning it read but instead on copper turning it green, then what color would the stop light be? >> i'm just saying. it was a faucet that i had. people would say mind blowing. i can't figure it out. i get one other one. this is the last thing. you are l. schwartz mur so you have fae url because it's easier to e-mail. so i decided to test it, and i

took bit.oi is the name of the website and put it into the shorter and got longer. [laughter] so i had to tweet that. he made its own url long verso it had nothing to do with astrophysics since. >> if pinocchio declared mauney no news is about to growth, what would his nose actually do? because it began to grow it meant she was telling the truth and it shouldn't have grown. if it doesn't it meant he was lobbying and it should have grown. i treated at one time and people said my and loan. thank you all for coming tonight.