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 for you to picture me as part of that epic adventure. not only that, even though you're a civilian agency, your most celebrated astronauts were military pilots. at a time when war was becoming less and less popular. the civil rights movement was more real to me than 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 prestigious marshall space flight center in huntsville, alabama. i found the correspondence in

your archives. do you remember? james webb, then head of nasa, wrote to german rocket pioneer who headed the center and was the chief engineer of the entire manned space program, the letter boldly and bluntly directs him to address the lack of equal employment opportunities for negroes. and to collaborate with the area colleges, alabama, and him and his to identify, train and recruit qualified negro engineers into the nasa huntsville facility. in 1964 you and i have not yet 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

negro families, mine included, from moving there. i'm glad their efforts fail. these buildings were called, perhaps prophetically, the skyview apartments. on his roof 22 stories above the bronx i would later train my telescope on the universe. my father was an activist, working under mayor lindsay, to create job opportunities for youth in the ghetto. as the inner city was called back then. year after year the forces operating against this effort were huge. poor schools, bad teachers, assassinate leaders. so while you were celebrating your monthly advances of space exploration, mercury to gemini, apollo, i was watching america do all it could to marginalize who i was and what i wanted to become. i looked to you for guidance, for a vision statement i could adopt, to fuel my ambitions. but you were not there for me. of course, i shouldn't blame you

for societies woes. your conduct was a symptom of america's habits, not a cause. i knew this. but you 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 because of them. for my inspiration i instead turned to the libraries, and my rooftop telescope, and the hayden planetarium. after some fits and starts where becoming an astrophysicist seems at times to be the path to most resistance, i became a professional scientist, i became an astrophysicist. over the decades that followed you've come a long way. including most recently the presidential initiated

congressionally endorsed vision statement that finally gets us out of low-earth orbit. whoever does not recognize the value of this adventure to our nation's future soon will ask the rest of the developed and developing world passes us by in every measure of technological and economic strength. not only that, today you look much more like america. from your senior level managers to your most decorated astronauts. congratulations, you now belong to the entire citizenry. examples disabound but i especially remember in 2004 when the public took ownership of the hubble telescope, your most beloved unmanned mission. they all spoke loudly ultimately reversing the threat that the telescope might not be service to extend its life another decade.

hubble's transit and images of the cosmos. it spoke to us all, as did the personal profiles of the space shuttle astronauts, and the scientists benefiting from its datastream. not only that, i even joined the ranks of your most trusted. i served dutifully on your advisory council. i came to recognize that when you're at your best, nothing in this world can inspire the dreams of the nation the way you can. dreams carry by a river of ambitious students, eager to become scientists, engineers and technologists in the service of the greatest quests 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 both turned

49, and we are well into our 50th orbit around the sun, i want you to know that i feel your pain and share your joys. and i look forward to seeing you back on the moon, but don't stop there. mars beckons, as do destinations beyond. birthday buddy, even if i've not always been, i am now your humble servant. thank you. [applause]

[applause] >> we ran a little long, sorry, but i wanted to devote some time to your questions. we have a microphone right at the front of each aisle. i welcome comments about anything or everything that has been bugging you or eating you, or critical, or supported, just. let's start here. >> you're talking about education automatically once people get more involved in the space program, but there seems to be a movement in this country to suppress education. you have state legislatures saying that education isn't an investment in the future but some sort of program for welfare. and they're cutting back education aid and at the same time universities are cutting

stem. every possible president can this is going to college is only for snobs and the only thing you learned there is to be brainwashed by liberal professors. in new jersey of a governor who's taking apart teachers -- >> i think we get the point. [laughter] but he is cutting back education and using the money to give tax benefits to millionaires. what's going on and what do we do about this and why is this happening? you think people would be looking for the future, not trying to destroy it. >> that's why i try not to speak to politicians. the question, you heard the question, there is a movement that is kind of anti-intellectual. >> anti-educational. >> which is even worse. worse for the state of the nation, whose economic health and security depends on innovations 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's economic values, and once it becomes part of what we want for ourselves, it is then a fundamental part and dimension of who our elected officials are. we don't have to wait from one official to the next to see who has an education idea. it is our idea. i will give you an example. i've been asked, what would you do if you were ahead of nasa? i don't want to be head of nasa. do you know why? because the head of nasa reports to the president and the president and the head of nasa a budget and that's what he's got to spend.

i kind of like the fact that if i'm not in the command chain to the president, i'm just a citizen, that means the president works for me. and under those conditions -- [applause] -- you could motivate, under those conditions you motivate the electorate to demand that which is the best use of this nation and to the extent that we failed to act, our leaders will fail. >> how do you get past this will paid propagandist that is anti- education? you just can't get news coverage. >> i am happy to say that there are four youtube videos of me, one of them that went viral the last few days with 2 million views that is celebrating what it is to know about space. this is a measure of the appetite that people have for this adventure. and i tweet, right, i tweet creepy weird things sometimes but i tweet, okay? and every tweet that resonates with every people, not every tweet but they sent it to their followers. i have like 360,000 twitter followers.

it's not just because i smile at them. it's because there's something that they are eating, that i'm feeding them. and i'm feeding them the universe. there's a cosmic appetite out there that remains to be fully served. and i'm just a piece of that puzzle. and there are others of my ilk out there. brian cox in the uk. he is more popular in the uk than carl sagan ever was here in america. there is, in fact, hope for this world. and it's represented by the electorate, not by our elected officials. [applause] in my humble opinion. yes, sir. >> 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 as one effort that has been some collaboration at the international level. you talk a lot about war and economies of the motivations for countries do it alone. but what about cooperation globally? when china, india, japan, russia, america, we don't all go in the same direction, but come together to do something, a grand vision so to speak. and despite being a very big skeptic of u.n. and how the international system of functions, but is there some hope for us? >> 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 the scene in the film 2010, which ostensibly

was the sequel to 2001, where the russians and americans collaborate in space trying to find life on jupiter. and this is still during the cold war incidents at an embassy or at an allied country, and it gets really ugly and nuclear weapons, then, the silos are opened. it gets so bad they have to into each other's embassies from their respective countries. and up comes the phone call at jupiter and it said, the russians have to leave the american ship, and the americans have to leave the russian ship. because we're having these problems down here on earth. that's just stupid, okay? and you know that's how it would happen. because there's politics driving all of us. so i'd like to believe that collaboration keeps nations at peace with each other, and since we're being economically driven in this idea rather than militaristic, then everybody could have a piece of that pie.

all the nations of the world, some of which are in desperate need, greater need of an economic boost than even we are. so i agreed and the contacts of economic growth it would be a boon to everyone. thank you. >> thank you. >> i have a real estate question. >> real estate or realistic? >> real estate. i am a new york city resident, and so are you, right? >> yes, i am. >> all right. as it pertains -- >> i have no idea where this question is going. no idea. [laughter] >> all right. as it pertains to sea level rise, i feel more comfortable knowing that -- >> so i can drown alongside you. >> so if i were looking to buy

an apartment right now, would you advise against a ground-level apartment? what floor which is that i should be looking at for the minimum. [laughter] >> i would advise that you -- [laughter] here's the problem. we now live in a culture, this is so not the '60s in this regard, we now live in a culture where disaster is impending and the first people, the first thing people think of is run. or, buy out the toilet paper. clear out the water from the shelves. the hurricane is coming, the tornado is coming. hide. if you're surrounded by scientists and engineers, that's not their first reaction. their first reaction is, how can i stop this? how can i deflect it? how can i prevent this from ever happening again?

geoengineering, how about that. you know what outcome from? or people among us who want to terraform mars. that's a cool thought, turn mars into an oasis, we can just all leather. if you have the power to into new earth, you can control sea levels on earth, like it's a trivial homework set. homework problem for school. so i try not to run away from problems. i see them as interesting challenges to salt. and so why not view this as an occasion to solve the problem of the melting ice caps rather than to distract yourself with what apartment to buy to avoid it? [applause] >> i just had a question. you cited economic incentives as one of the main drivers of future exploration in space. i was just wondering if you could see corporations being at

the forefront of space exploration as opposed to governments of the world? >> that will never happen ever. [laughter] another delusional point that i make in the book. let corporations do, even newt gingrich while he is pandering on as politicians be rigidly, to the space community of florida where you find kennedy space center. he said let's get corporations out there. it was a wrong wrong. no, no. anytime, this is important. you see this, except the people lined up. if something is expensive, which space exploration is, if something is dangers which space exploration is, if something has unmeasured risks with space exploration is, it cannot be done by private enterprise because you cannot create a

capital market valuation of it. i'm just saying. the way it works is, i'm looking for investors. what's my return on my investment? here's the risks, here's the costs, here's the rate of return. you cannot do that for something that expensive and that danger is that you have never done before. you cannot get investors for the. you could never have gotten investors for that. columbus was paid by governmen governments. he drew the maps, he found out where the trade winds are from he found out with a hostile folks are where he landed, and where the happy folks are. he found out where the wood supply was fix his boat. baby goes back, but maps are understood, then comes the dutch east india trading company. the railroads across the country, somebody had to acquire that lend.

it was called the government. somebody had to figure where the good indians were and the bad indians were. someone had to get with the mountains and valleys were. that was started with thomas jefferson and lewis and clark and other expeditions that without the. you draw the maps, then private enterprise comes. so what role would, could likely enterprise play? where the patent safari been granted and the risks are assessed and the dangers are understood. that would be lower the orbit. nasa has been there done that. it's still dangerous but we understand the danger. we can quantify them. sure, but not to pay private enterprise to take us to space station but i don't have a problem with that. let private enterprise take tourists into orbit. i don't have a problem with that. but let it happen. we live in a free market society, free markets should go where ever an investment pays a return.

if that includes space let it be so. but my read of 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 governments. thank you. [applause] >> two-part question raised on -- almost august with my son. one is the saturn five was awesome. the stuff they're talking about, or space travel could go, what they could do, that was really awesome. what happened to all that stuff, sort of happening, sort of fell apart, part one. speak why did we stop treating? >> part two, my son is 19 this month. he wanted to work in as. he spent 10 years math, physics, good at it, talented. you know if he wants to do now? be a math teacher, which is not a bad thing but we are losing our best and brightest because of all that drive is going to

our 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 onto the next year, maybe a flame was lit but something has to fan that flicker occasionally you have to reignite it, as anyone who barbecues knows. and so, as you move forward if there's a grand vision fair, it becomes self driven. >> but what do we do with this generation of kids who a couple years ago were still interested in their no more space travel? >> i wouldn't say the wind is out of their sale. i would say the rocket fuel is out of their launch vehicle. it is a lost generation in that regard. that's the grim reality of it. there's no polite way to put it. so a lot of them, but they are very horrible, they just won't be working in the fields in which they were trained. and specifically in those fields for which they have ambitions to work. that's the lost generation of

americans in the 21st century. have a nice day. sorry. [laughter] >> i just wanted to expand on your debt, were, wealth hypothesis. and i think it's the wise missions, the ones with the map all this killer asteroids -- >> many missions have the capacity to map killer asteroids, so wise is an acron acronym. >> so thin that actually, because what you said, that might be a driver to have actually knock one out. >> but it is a defense project at the level. so while we are visiting the solar system which now becomes our backyard, oh, there's an asteroid coming, strap on this combination of rockets and take it out. i don't want the reason to fund the space program to be so that we can deflect an asteroid.

because once we've ended with them all and we find out the next when it needs deflection is in 100 years, the funding goes away. >> wouldn't that not create spinoff? what's the amount of unknowns? >> all of this can create spinoffs. you get spinoffs. i'm not arguing with this business. or are always spinoffs. but these are not the spinoffs i'm talking about. i'm talking about the effect on occulter where everybody wants to innovate, whether or not there in the space program. that's the real economic driver. >> you don't think saving the world -- >> it will, you will quadruple nasa's funding, and we get a better measurement to the asteroid and we find that it will not hit us and all the funding dries up just as we did after landed on the moon. that is the wrong start of motivation to get a healthy space program. it will work but it will be a one off. i don't want a one of. >> is that not a bridge too far?

>> it is. the problem is our data on asteroids are on timescales longer than the reelection time of our representatives. [applause] >> 88% of congress runs for reelection 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 at 100 years? i'm not, i'm not going there. it will work when the time comes, fine. but it might not work because if we don't do space between now and then it might be too late to start a new space program to make that happen. if we go extinct by an asteroid, you had a space program available to us, to have deflected it, we would be the laughingstock of the aliens in the galaxy. [laughter] what? a had up also both arms and they have a space program?

yet they went extinct? [laughter] like the key bring dinosaurs before them. they had an excuse. they didn't have opposable thumbs. [laughter] we are running long. i will take just a few more questions. i don't know if will get to everybody on the line. i love the habit by the way. >> my question is coming seems to me that competition is what kind of drove the space age. competition between the united states or capitalism competition between soviet union and communism. that doesn't seem to be, it doesn't seem to be a need for competitiveness. there is no competition out. >> okay. so today, the question is back and we were in competition for short. it was a military contest. right now have kind of an economic competition going on with china, and i wouldn't quite say there's a military conflict there, but i can say this.

i've actually fantasize about this, getting back to the military driver, i wanted to go visit the heads of state of china, and whisper to them, i need you to leak a memo, doesn't have to be true, just make a memo that says you want to put military bases on mars. [laughter] okay? are a. we be on mars in two years. do not easy that would be in china? mars is already read, write? you can market that. [laughter] you got that one. so competition does sort of fuel fires, yes. and with regard to the collaboration on the space station, collaboration i think is 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.

this is what humans do. we can be in denial of it that affected some of the greatest drivers there ever was. so i try to be honest with ourselves about what it is to be human and what is to get the job done. yes. is what i would do. we would end the line with the withstanding now, and i'm going to give you soundbite answers, going to pretend i'm on jon stewart, okay? that weight we will get you quickly and then we'll call it a night, okay, rather than full-fledged answers to go. >> my question is, granted you are coming together in of collective will, people to give the motivation economic driver to actually make this happen and get the budget going, something longer than the particular term of congress or a president, what is the next step question mentioned that instead of focusing on one off, particular destination are killing

asteroids, to create a platform which can do anything that would dream of at that time, what is your idea, what would your proposal before the platform? a space elevator? >> i'm not going to prescribe the next steps that people take. that will be a function of the creativity of the engineers and technologists of the day. maybe they want to build a space elevator, all right? that's a cheap way to get to geosynchronous orbit. by the way, you should visit our space exhibit here. there's a whole section on the space elevator, beyond earth is the name of the exhibit. curated by my colleague. so you build capacity to go anywhere and let scientists decide, i need to go here and there, and geopolitics since we got to do this. the military says we've got to put a laser beam over here. and the tourists folks that i want to visit the. it will just run its course.

as long as you're dancing a frontier, our economy gets stoked and i don't care what the destination is. >> you don't have a particular preference? >> i have no preference to all of space is my preference. [applause] >> i wanted to ask about colonizing the moon. i really to think i could ever vote for newt gingrich, but -- >> but it remember, you're in new york city speaking that way. >> let's say that obama says let's do, let's go to the moon. what are the realities of a moon colony and what would that entail wax could we do that? >> i think a moon colony as a little bit ambitious because there is no air on the moon, and no cattle, no grass. it's a little ambitious i think. >> is a crazy? >> no, it is not crazy. it is not more crazy than queen isabella cingular columbus, go find the edge of the uzbek it's not more crazy than that. >> an atmosphere.

>> that is a sticking point. where ever columbus when he could still breathe, you know? so these are challenges. maybe a moon colony won't pan out because you can't get enough interest in it either always beside you can do on the moon. the military today views the men as a strategic place, lunar space is a new word, new to deny, is the new high ground which is the entire space between earth and the moon's orbit. so could be military reasons for doing that as well. i don't like war but i recognize that war is not a new conduct among nations and among people, and so, and just because people to go, let's make space, no war in space. if you're that committed why are we having were still near? 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.

so i'm given no reason, i'm not even hopeful to think that there won't be space worse. i wish i could be hopeful but i don't have that much confidence inhuman conduct may be the colonies won't pan out but there'll be plenty of stuff to do in space, i promise you. maybe the colony is just a place to go, it's a one week torture. >> i want to do -- >> we will send you. yes, ma'am. >> would've spacex it in all this? >> spacex, they are trying to make a vehicle with the efficiency of private enterprise that will substitute for nasa's vehicles to go back and forth to low-earth orbit. >> with a substitute for the money that would've gone to mass or are they going to enhance -- >> nasa gets a budget. instead of having to spend more to send their own people, they will just it with private enterprise, the same with the postal service rends belly space on airplanes to move your mail.

we presume that when you go private enterprise they will do more efficiently and more intelligently, or more reliably than what the government program would've done. so that's the goal. spacex found by elon musk, the writer of paypal sold to ebay for a billion dollars, and he was like 32 or something. one of these space billionaires who decides couple of space so much gimmies trying to now make his own spacecraft. just? >> how old are you? >> eight. >> eight, that is so cool. [applause] >> is the pastor bedtime? this is so past my bedtime. i don't know what today. go one. >> i want to go to mars but i was wondering -- [laughter] [applause] >> let the record show our age-old wants to go to mars unknown as yet as that of themselves.

go ahead. >> and i was wondering what it would take to get their. >> you are the age right now of who we would -- in other words, when we go to mars, which i would like to think is the next couple of decades to you again become the age of those astronauts. so i am too old but i may be dead by then, but you, you will be just right. and so the earthlings who want to go to mars is just right for a jewel. so it's dangerous. you will be a long time away from home, so probably you will want to get, take some videos with you, you know, and some books. and nasa put a lot of effort into making the space journey very much feel at home. so you will stop an e-mail account and you get to make phone calls with video calls with your friends, and, of course, nasa is talking to you all the time, right?

so it's a long voyage and they're still challenges. there's radiation from the sun we don't get not to shoot you from. i see those as engineering problems, not physics problems. we have a lot of clever engineers out there. it's nine months to mars, and you have to until earth and mars line back up in their orbits to come back, so that's a couple years. so the whole round-trip is about three or four years. you will be three or four years away from home. so as long as you're okay with that, we will send you to mars. you are signed up. thank you. [applause] >> she gives me hope but my question is for you, dr. tyson, is how can we get our sons and daughters who are so wrapped up in the hood and technology that they do nothing else? they don't have a passion. they just stay on facebook and as for another telephone. [applause] >> so the problem is not that they are looking down at our

technology. the problem is that we are not engaged in a project that is grand enough to compel them to look up. [applause] that is the challenge. can i give you an example? it's a quick, i said i would be quick on this but i'm not being quick. do you know what tweet ups are? in the twitterverse, companies or agencies nasa did a few of these, where there's a launch engine by certain number of people who are active on twitter, and you give lectures to them and they are tweeting everything. and so the twitterverse learns about what's going on vicariously. i at one of the nasa launches a they talk to the tweet ups commend you to do you know what i said to myself? 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 tweak because it will distract them from what i'm saying on this

stage. and so i started speaking, and i reserved my best stuff, it's flowing, it's going, and nobody is looking down at their device because what was coming out from up here was a greater message than anything they could have possibly been doing on their smartphone. so, don't blame the technology, blame the absence of vision and. [applause] >> i have a philosophical question. would you rather die now or live forever. [laughter] >> i kind of bought into the concept of a natural life. coming, so i know philosophers like having those kind of debates, but i never believe

that the options available to a creative person are ever limited by the choices offered by a philosopher. [laughter] [applause] >> so for example, there's the lifeboat and a certain amount of food for four, but there's six people, so do you throw him overboard otherwise everyone dies? or do you even? these choices, and i'm saying maybe we can invent away to draw fish from the ocean so we don't have to throw them overboard. see, i like solutions to problems rather than the blunt do a or b., right? and part of this i think is because we grew up in a multiple-choice school system. sometimes enters exists where beyond the choices that you have thought of as a person who wrote the exam. so that is my press unfulfilling answer to you. [applause] >> indeed, and that's why we don't have a hash tag to

tonight's event so we don't get distracted from twittering about it. the early observations about the politician talking about a need to be anti-science and anti-education is very interesting, particularly with video cameras, with smart phones. which wouldn't exist had they had their way. >> this is part of the hypocrisy of it all. especially the people who said i don't need space program. you know, i've got my gps and my weather channel, so what do i need to spend money on space? you get a lot of this going on. >> dr. tyson, the big expensive space i believe is getting local service to big rockets which is really parallel to technology. as they have been looking seriously at antigravity, just like in the early h.g. wells, earth to the moon or whatever.

>> good question. among the propulsion research that is going on it does not include antigravity. and the ground is a pretty remote notion passionate anti-ground -- you don't find people who are physics fluent ready to devote their lives on antigravity. the people attended antigravity our people who think that laws of physics are only guidelines rather than laws. [laughter] these are the same communities who would do, for example, perpetual motion machines but it violates known and tested laws of physics. so okay, maybe you'll 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 nontheless, there are other challenges of propulsion. there's the ion drives, and we

are way behind. you're absolutely right, it is world war ii proportion to lg. we are so far behind that it is embarrassing. it's embarrassing. i tweeted recently. 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. you want to sort of delay one-upsmanship on in the know, i've got nothing for you, agent, sort. go find some other planet to show your stuff. hello, yes. >> thank you. [inaudible] >> you've got to make them quick because we are running long. >> a tweet,. [inaudible] more popular than the jersey shore. >> say that louder. so thank you for this cheap,

like my pr agent or she is saying thank you for the index that is very rich and flushed out. also since i tweeted on the universe often, and space, i tossed and many other sweets for the book. kind of like biscuits. if you've earned your way to the point, i will hand you a tweet. this one tweet, if you could lean in closer to the microphone spent a nasa reality show or be more popular than jersey shore? civilizations future depends on that. >> thank you for that. a lot of effort went into this. and the organization of this effort was made possible, there's an editor's name on the cover of this book, edited by my longtime editor from natural history magazine. this is every thought i've ever had about her past, present and future and to courtney those thoughts into something a parent requires an editor. did you have a question?

>> the business of saving the planet requires commitment to my question is, we are all asking questions. do you have a question to bounce back to his to take us to leave what -- >> yes, my question would be why aren't you spending more energy trying to convince others of the value of this epic of venture? and you can do that by letters to the editor, op-ed's, any of the above, if you have an opinion, you share it. so thank you, thank you for the. we have six left and we are done. >> i came here tonight and i was kind of new to this whole space thing, and i wanted to learn more. is this some kind of podcast may be, comedians on a sunday, i can shake this thing out? and perhaps engage further on the conversation? >> so you want to learn more about space?

[laughter] >> something that i could perhaps tweet out to my friends spin that everyone is a reader out there, i understand. i'm tried every angle here. so i tweet, right? and also hosts a radio radio show, right? called star talk radio where we -- [applause] i have a comedian as my cohost and my guests are not scientist. there are people from pop culture and would explore ways that science can't improve their lives. i recommend you check it out. i fed morgan freeman as a guest and whoopi goldberg and jon stewart, joan rivers. can i tell you, i said to joan, so joe, what do you do when the aliens? so she said, i don't care if the temperatures long as they are single and jewish. [laughter] so it's a celebration of science and just run to get it out there. so people are not, don't fear

it. but yes, in modern times it takes many media to be fluent because not everyone is doing the same thing at the same time, as we were in the 1960s all watching walter cronkite to tell us what today's news was. >> to clarify, i was check out star talk radio spent star talk review.net. tank you for that. [laughter] >> i will try to make this as relatively brief as it possibly can but i am one of the lost generation you spoke about. i am 32, i will be 33 this fall. i live next to an air force base and i went out myself with my father, the editor-in-chief of the local newspaper and watched the missiles go up until challenger happen. the shuttle happening in my town was canceled. i haven't eight year old daughter who sings along with your voice and others talking about -- [applause] >> thank you. a series of created youtube videos what it takes publicly

available clips and like puts into a beach. is very creative and their hugely popular. >> come on back things, her favorite is a case for mars but she talked about going to mars herself but i want to say say thank you to the other little group was adequate my daughter's age. coming back from that, there's a deep understanding on my part as a physics major and as a physics educator of our connection to the universe. and as much as i want to believe in life elsewhere, as a scientist i want to see it. and until we have seen that somewhere else, i feel like it is part of that defense motivation that you think of and mentioned for us to get off the planet. i don't care if it's an asteroid. i don't care if it's the sun going red giant in 5 billion years. if we stay here we are doomed.

and as far as we know we are at. >> so this is a point that was made by stephen hawking what he said we have to be a multi-planet species. otherwise, we are doing because something bad could happen to earth, a virus, an asteroid or what have you. here's my rebuttal to that, if i may. >> will you answer my question? do you feel that a motivation like that is valuable as a component? the economics are part of feeding species, are defeating 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. hocking may display. regard to be a multi-planet species, otherwise with all the eggs in one basket you go extinct. what might be that which threatens earth, is it an asteroid? a killer asteroid the size of mount everest? if the you can -- hit the

yucatán peninsula in mexico. it was a mexico back then but whatever the dinosaurs called it. here's the thing to ever come to be multi-planet species, and i hinted to this before, we would have to terraform some of the planet. it would have to be mars because no one knows what to do with the runaway greenhouse of the things. terraform mars to give we have the power to terraform mars and the technology to ship a billion people there, we can deflect the asteroids. the scale of that operation relative to whatever it would take to protect us, i think there's no contest to you deflect the astra, you find a cure for the virus, you stop the volcano, you realize the plates of the earth. i don't see that as a realistic solution to an impending problem that we might face.

what i do see is the solution is a solution to the problem rather than running away to another planet so the earth can become toast your and then you have two planets and asteroids had to one of them. what you do with everyone on that planet? sorry, we are the safe ones, goodbye. it's not a practical -- [laughter] if you have the power of geoengineering on that scale, you don't need to leave earth. you make the earth exactly as you want it to be. if you have the power enough to fix mars, you can fix earth in any way you choose. this is my contention. >> don't have power enough -- [inaudible] spent puzzling. so we will go there, too. [laughter] but the motivation wouldn't be so that we won't die on earth. i just don't see that. i'm not convinced by the

arguments. real quick, yes. >> okay, so you start out with kind of the three motivators, and one of them dropped out real quick. but isn't the whole kind of glorification of kings and whatnot, isn't that really just fear of death and sort of wanting to have your name in the history books alongside buzz aldrin, so long as there are history books? isn't that still the? >> it could be with the individual but you don't control that much money. >> it's not big enough for humanity? >> right. i'm talking about large-scale projects that divert a major fraction of your gross national product, gross domestic product inhuman capital or financial gap to just because you want to tombstone, the cost doesn't -- your tombstone and the pyramid are not the same thing. so the pyramid, they want to live forever, as they had the power to do it. it's inexpensive tombstone and

people did in the service of the federal. he has the power. people build the pyramid didn't. so it is a power thing. it is a fear factor as well. >> so, spent we are all too small spent in less spent lsu working, in fact, our version of a king to do this would be bill gates. say bill, take us to mars spent the bill and melinda gates foundation -- >> he would be like our king and he would be spending the crown jewels to do this. i will talk to them that i will call them up and find out. [laughter] >> i have two questions. >> sure. >> did you celebrate high day yesterday? >> i did celebrate high day yesterday. [applause] >> for those of you who are not geek enough to know what that sentence adjustment, on march 14, if you ride it out in

american-style, three slash 14, 3.1 for, and it is high. supply geeks out there celebrate it. so it's a really geeky thing to do and i tweeted, there was pressure from me to tweak something on pi day, such we did and i said i'm not out of control. i got it to 12 decimal places. that's good enough, that's good enough to get the circumference of the earth to one thousands of an inch so that's good enough for me. but yes, i did celebrate pi day spent my second question is, what's your favorite like three numbers in high? >> my favorite three digits in pi. i like the first three. [laughter] because that gets you most of the way there, okay? [laughter] [applause] >> thank you. >> you referred to engineers and biologists to our future how is a historic important for future?

>> how is the historic important. everything i know about human conduct that we need to put into play going 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 relationship between nations, just you know, go back home. you are not useful out there if you want to bring real solutions to real problems. so historians are really important in this. particularly historian to put things in context rather than, which is what most of them do, rather than just retail a timeline of events. context matters. attitudes matter. cultures matter. and so yeah, i don't want to know just what war you fought and 14 replaced him, i want to know what was in the hearts and minds of the people who were in that country, the attitudes they had, what led one country to war

against another for a thousand years. what led one country not force, what is going on in the culture and in their mind. so by all means, if you want a major in history, go for it. it will be harder to find a job, but other than that. [laughter] >> the last two questions. these better be awesome questions. the pressure is on. >> 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 spent not because i wanted to be that way. that's just my read of history, yes. >> but he believed to get further than the edges of the solar system we need to unify, like one government, one people as humanity, to get out there? >> no, you need another law of physics. the problem is harder than just

whether you combine government. if you want to leave the solar system and visit the nearest star and do it on the fastest spaceship we ever launched, and you hitch a ride on that crap, you would arrive at the new start to the sun a few thousand years later. so you need to be really fertile -- [laughter] order we need some other way, understanding the fabric of space-time because travel on those timescales are incommensurate with the longevity of the human -- of the human individual. so to the moon is a few days. mars is a few years. that fits within our 80 year life expected. traveling to the other stars does not. so for the moment, i'm good with the telescope to get me there, and there are plenty of destinations, including a whole new sloth of dwarf planets, pluto included, get over it --

[laughter] to visit. nobody says you have to visit a traditional plan. there are many rocky services that would welcome our footprints. >> and i just have a quick comment. i read this calvin and hobbes strip once, and it said the way right now that we know that there's intelligent life out there is that it hasn't tried to contact us yet. and i've got to say, i completely agree with that. >> yet, i have said that same thing but in a more severe way. but i said aliens have actually visited us, okay? there are two branches of that, but one of them, they've actually visited us, but they land in like times square and nobody knows, okay? or in hollywood, and no one noticed. but another one, of the more terrifying prospect is that they have visited us, they have inspected will we are and have

concluded that there is no sign of intelligent life on earth. [laughter] yes, i have to ask how old you are. >> eleven. >> eleven, okay. welcome. is a past your bedtime? >> no. >> good. do you have a question? >> gives. your tweets in your book, are they just random or are they for fun? because like in chapter four you're talking about aliens if you say any suspicious that they would be evil as more of a reflection of our fear about how we would treat an avian species if we found them, than any actual knowledge about how an alien species which because. and then you go to space tweet seven, how it blocks all 40,000 student nuke as droplets, aliens are safe. then we are listening them right now. [laughter] >> okay. [applause]

i warned you about my tweets, didn't i? i forgot why i talked about sneezing inside of a space, because that's really kind of nasty thing to think about. you don't want have a head cold while you're spacewalking. the tweets, they are just random thoughts that come to me. i don't invent them for the tweet. i haven't anyway and then i make them each week and share these random -- another one i had was, if human, if our blood were based not on iron turning it read, but instead on copper turning it green, then what color would the stoplights be? [laughter] i'm just saying. it was a thought i had. so i tweeted it. people tweeting that, mind blown, i can't figure it out, oh, gosh. [laughter] another one, the last thing.

there is a url shorter called -- it is a url shorter. so we have a big fat url, you put into because you're sure once was easy to e-mail. so i decided to just test it and i took did not transit, which is the name of the website, put it into the url shorter and it got longer and. [laughter] so i tweeted. i have to tweak that, right? a url shorter made its own url longer because nothing to do with astrophysics. here's one for you. this will keep you awake at night. are you ready? if pinocchio declared my nose is about to grow, what would his nose actually do? [laughter] because if it began to grow, it meant he was telling the truth and it shouldn't have grown.

if it doesn't grow, it meant he was lying and then it should have grown. i tweeted that one time. people said mind blown. [laughter] a.q. all for coming tonight. [applause] visit booktv.org to watch any of the programs you see here online. type the author or book title in the search bar on the upper left side of the page and click search. you can shoot anything you see on booktv.org easily by clicking share on the upper left side of the page and selecting the format. .tv streams live online for 40 hours every weekend with top nonfiction book's and others. booktv.org. >> you been watching booktv, 40 hours o