we are now a separate company. >> this is the communicators. we have been talking with chairman and ceo of time warner. >> and you have been watching the communicator's on c-span. this is our weekly look at telecommunications policies and issues. next week to our coverage from boston and the 2012 cable show convince it -- continues. talking with to the federal trade commission officials. thank you for being with us. you can watch any of the previous at c-span.org. >> join as this saturday from more from the n.c.a.a. convention. we will bring you discussions on the future of town and music distribution with the ceos of comcast and verizon wireless. a look at cable news, and the panel on the 2012 presidential campaign with ms nbc host chris matthews, a cnn anchor john king, and univision maria elena

salinas. that is saturday starting at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span2. >> from the american museum of natural history in new york city, astrophysicist talks about the history and future of nasa and the u.s. space program. he argues that the exploration of space benefits americans more than they may think. this is just over two hours. >> good evening, everyone, and welcome. thank you for your patients. my name is susan morris command and a senior manager of public programs year at the museum. we are thrilled to have you all here tonight. give yourselves a round of applause. [applause] [applause] the american museum of natural history has been home to some of the country's greatest thinkers. scientists and citizens to have changed the way that we understand scientific and

natural phenomenon and have brought that understanding to the national consciousness. from theodore roosevelt degenerated seminal american conservation and preservation practices, to margaret need to change the way we view and value other cultures. bringing his unique intellect and the force of personality to help us understand the beauty and the importance of space science and exploration. the frederick p. rosen director of the planetarium, born and raised in new york city. dr. tyson attended the brides high-school of science and later earned his ba in physics from harvard and then his ph.d. in astrophysics from columbia. that's right. [laughter] he has been an adviser to nasa and to three presidents on matters related to space exploration. it has -- he has been awarded 16 honorary doctorates. he even has an asteroid named after him.

widely known as a friend and me a pluto, he joins us tonight to discuss his latest book, space chronicles, facing the ultimate frontier. please join me now in giving a warm welcome to dr. kneele digress tuchman. [applause] >> they do. a warm introduction. just so you know, this is the only public talk anywhere that i am giving on this book. so you are here and now for it,

just so you know. i'm just saying. [applause] that me get ready appear. of me tell you how it all began. there was the big bang -- [laughter] 1996. i was approached by a columbia university press to write a chapter in an encyclopedia that they were preparing to celebrate the end of the 20th century. it was called quite simply that plumb the history of the 20th-century. it might even -- i have it here.

this was it. okay? now, what is significant about it is the person originally scheduled to right that was carl sagan. he had been asked to contribute a chapter on cosmic discovery to that volume. he had taken el in 1995. he died in 1996. my name was put up as one who would then write in his stead. i was honored to be asked, although the size of the project was bigger than what i was really accustomed to at the time i was writing monthly columns for natural history magazine. coming in at two or 3,000 words. that is pretty much what i could pump out an amount. this chapter was asked of me to be 10,000 words. i just -- so i've almost declined. and i said, no.

maybe i can do something different and a little more creative. i thought, okay. why not think of discovery not in the 20th century, not even in terms of the discovery of objects or places, but maybe the discovery of ideas. i would track the transition from the discovery of places going back to the era of the great exporters to the discovery of ideas once you nap roller. what is left for you to discover? the bottom of the ocean, but philosophically what's left once you know that the whole earth is there? and the exploration of ideas and then take you to new places beyond. they take you to space. and that thought to myself, at the time you know, i really want to go to mars, like with people. that is an uncommon view among

my colleagues. my astrophysics colleagues by and large. maybe three to one ratio. they see no value in sending humans in space. now, that sentiment, by the way, is held by an entire generation of my colleagues who grew up in the 1960's wanted to become a scientist because of the manned program. and so there is a little bit of hypocrisy there, and i've taken to task on a. not only that, it is in my judgment politically naive to think that nasa is simply your private science funding agency. more on that later. so i said to myself, well, how much would it cost? let's say it cost to go to mars to my half a billion -- we could do that tomorrow if it cost half a billion. it's a cost half trillion dollars.

what is a factor of a thousand between france? a half a trillion dollars, let's send or even a trillion. that is expensive. that is a lot of money. actually, it is a small percent of our budget when spread out over many years, but nonetheless, it is 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 undertaken by human beings, what did you do to compel your community to invest in this way? and i would make a whole chapter , maybe even flesh it out into a book of all the things that drove humans to do great things. then i would look at the mission to mars and line it up in the matrix and say, okay, this is -- our's is this percent of our gdp. who else but that% of their gdp and but to do? a whole block.

and then analysis contained in this chapter, the one chapter in here, the chapter is called paths to discovery. don't tell columbia press this, but you don't have to buy this book because that chapter was excerpted for the space chronicle's book. [laughter] i brought this just for historical continuity so that you know what is behind all this, how it all began. i made a list of the most expensive things we have ever done as pcs. we could agree with most of what appears on this list. the great wall of china. expensive in terms of human or financial capital. the great wall of china. the manhattan project, the apollo project, the cathedral building as an enterprise, and during the renaissance. the -- what else that we put there? , but the columbus voyage is, very expensive to queen isabella and king ferdinand.

the magellan voyages. a whole episode of voyages. the pyramids. let's make your list. and any gripe about that list i have just tossed up? we all agree. major investments in human and financial capital. then i ask, what was the motivation for those? and in my list of the most expensive things we have ever done i came up with only three drivers, three, no more than three, no fewer than three. the number one driver of the mall is war. you can call a defense. that gets you agree will china. that could see them and project. the fact -- that also gets to the apollo project. it is the, i don't want to die forever. if you feel threatened and your * you will spend money without limits to not die.

okay. that is kind of an obvious one in retrospect. what is next? the prospect of gaining great economic wealth. not quite as potent as the i don't want to die driver, but the geezer really powerful operating on the motivations of nations. that is what gets you the columbus wagers. columbus himself was a discover. somebody had to write the check. the people who wrote the checks it, though, by the way, well you're going, take the spanish flags with you and put them where you land, declared the land for spain, see if there are riches. the queen did not say to columbus, oh, tell us what new things you learned about the bosnia over your land. 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, and hundreds of years ago. that is the praise of royalty or dd. this is the effort to appease an entity that is at a perceived to be or is a word literally is more powerful than you are. that is how you get the pyramids. that is how you get the cathedral building. now, today you don't have kings and cons motivating a major funded projects of nations. there was a day when we did. so i say to myself, if we are going to go to mars, and mars is expensive, it is going to have to satisfy one of those two criteria. otherwise we're just never going to go. and this was my revelation. that is the centerpiece of that chapter.

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 enthusiasts. what did they tell you? they say, oh, the reason we stopped going to the men, we did not have leaders. we needed visionary people. we stop being risktakers. there are a whole list of arguments for why we are not in space right now. why we are not -- why the space frontier has not continued beyond humans landing on the moon. there is a whole list. i deduce that without exception every item on this list was delusional. [laughter] it doesn't -- include other things. we need to explore science because it is in our dna. because we are americans, and

americans are explorers. all of these reasons are given. my reading of history tells me that none of those reasons matter to those who are writing the checks. that is the difference. and so i have to tell people this. if we're going to go to mars them we are here going to motivate people in a way that is either a militaristic and driven, but nobody really wants that to be the jurors in, 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 even invited after that article was published, the chapter was published to a space developing conference. i was positioned between buzz aldrin and the fellow -- forgive

me, i forgot his name, who wrote october sky. do we remember that fellow's name? homer him. thank you. homer had come. these are rock wall folks. one of them has actually been on the moon. another one was inspired. so there is a lot of inspiration talk in front of me and behind me. that is 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 deleted. that was -- i was blunt. i said it right to his face. [laughter] kind of. i mean to my was a little more polite at the time. i just said to my thinking might be a little misdirected in your thinking. that is the polite way to say you are clueless about what is actually driving human

motivation here. and so okay. the couple of years go by and i get a phone call. the white house. this is april 2001. the white house. it's george w. bush white house. i get a phone call. oh, we want to check your interest to see if you would serve on a presidential commission. i said, a commission on what? i don't even know what the commission is. first of all, i am 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 in where you want to go in washington politics is the currency of all interactions. so this is not my culture. they want me to come to washington to serve the commission.

i said, what is the title of the commission? the commission on the future of the united states aerospace industry. as said, and you got the right tyson? you know, i fly in airplanes. i don't fly airplanes. no, we know who you are. we have read your writings. i said, could they have -- what? how? well, who else? so they read me the list of other people. buzz aldrin was going to be on that commission. and just in case you don't remember, buzz aldrin was apollo 11 astronauts, the second person to walk on the moon, the first mission to the moon, lunar surface. so all right. twelve 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. so -- [laughter] am i lying? on not. i'm not. and so there goes one. he's in the corner in the back and think. so i'm getting called by a republican president. i'm an academic. i have learned that george bush did not do well in his astronomy class. still counting temple chad's in florida. and so they said, well, we have to ask you a few questions. and out came a series of questions to all the questions that are illegal on a java application i got asked. well, because, it is not -- it is an appointment. it is not a job.

so the rules don't apply. what is your sexual preference? what is our religion? have you ever protested? have you ever been arrested for anything? if you ever protested an almost get arrested? it was this whole long series of questions. then, then because answer the questions. fine. then it said, are you familiar with the president's politics and policies to back i said, well, yes, but just from what i read in the paper. you know, i'm not a politician. so, yeah. i think of familiar. then they said, what you think. [laughter] so how do i answer this? and what probably was only ten seconds of thought felt like it was many minutes before i entered my reply. at the time george bush was appointing members of his

cabinet. so some of them looked quite promising at the time. this is early 2001. : paul was just announced as one of his chief advisers. connally is a rice, provost at stanford. so these are educated people. he is appointing people smarter than he is. that -- okay. there is some hope there, i thought to myself. so what i really wanted to do was reach. temple chad. and as said, but that would not be productive. they're trying to do good here. and so i gained my composure. like i said, probably only ten seconds, although it felt like minutes. i replied. i applaud the president's efforts to surround himself with talented people so that he can

make the best decisions that he can in the interest of his nation. [applause] that was a thursday. by monday i was appointed to the president's commission to study the future of the united states aerospace industry. i would learn that 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 is actually a smokescreen there. weigh on the far right there is a smokescreen. you cannot have that conversation. this is what the television news talk shows do.

they did people with hot air on both ends, and at the end there is just more hot air. you actually have to crawl out of those zones and stand in the middle and then have that conversation. over the condition that soda did. upon detecting so high white -- upon doing so i would not have known or even seen or understood and so it was quite eliminating for me to have this experience. out give you an example of a liberal smokescreen by s. bias is on each extreme. its starts to see them when you are there. you have to step up and look back. here is a bleeding liberal, a bleeding heart liberal bias. are you ready to back because nobody in new york let bush. i said, was appointed to a bush commission. of. they appointed you because you're black.

okay. actually, there's another black person on the commission. a four-star air force general. so the argument evaporates immediately. as if it is no argument. there were two women on the panel. one of them an aerospace analyst from wall street and another a former member of congress who had air force bases in her district. other people, there is the head of aerospace at lockheed martin. buzz aldrin has been on the moon. as we go around introducing ourselves, it is tough to fault -- follow buzzed all tent. i've been on the moon. okay. were done. i have nothing on that. in that meeting everybody there

retest 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. they treated her kindly. now, why am i even taking you down this road? am just trying to share with you my baptism into this world in aerospace and nasa and what i have done about it since then. all right. that commission was formed because -- backup one moment. told members of the commission. it is a white house commission. the rules are, six members are appointed by congress. six members are appointed by the white house.

of the six members appointed by congress -- what was it, a mix that reflected the partisan split in congress at the time. so this is it. they're trying to be politically fair as they construct this, but since it is a white house commission the white house appoints six people. bush could have appointed six republicans, but he didn't. i am not a republican. that was one of the questions they asked me. political affiliation. you know they're going to ask me that if they will ask me what religion i am in my sexual preference. i said i am a registered democrat. that was known to them. i was nonetheless tired. so that's just false. it's part of the smokescreen. at the limits for me to the political spectrum. the aerospace industry lost a half a million jobs.

its huge consolidations from dozens and dozens of companies down to just 45. that is why these aerospace companies have joint names, lockheed martin. where did that come from? could use to be martin marietta. it used to be just lockheed. these companies started collapsing down into just a few. congress was were reached. what affect could this have on the aerospace industry of the nation? because aerospace was impossible for our military, airborne security, is responsible for transportation, commerce. they recognize there is a fundamental part of what it is to live in america in the 21st century and they want to get to the bottom of it. many of the aerospace company's not only make airplanes the spaceship's. so we have zero people on the commission and block the commission. i was counted as one of the space people. one of the trips that we took was around the world.

this is 2,000 a half to the two dozen too, are around the world to keep places to find out, is there some competition that we are 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 are went there with the complete portfolio of stereotypes about what i would expect. boulevards of bicycles. this is what i expected to read all the films that i saw growing up. arrive in beijing. they're bicycles, but that is not what is killing the boulevard. mercedes and volkswagen and bmw. it's not like any picture i had seen. we meet with captains of industry. heads the agency. i look carefully nsc college

ranks, graduate degrees. almost every one of the leaders that were shaping the future culture, the future industrial culture of china was trained and educated here in america in the engineering schools. we took an excursion to the great wall of china. never been there. i am on the great wall. the wall just goes. then it disappears in the mist. right? you can't see the end of it. there is. i looked in every direction. only breaks that made the wall. by the way, too you know what defines the distance between turrets? there is a reason for the distance that was set between with the territory.

that is exactly right. it had to do with -- it had to do with the precision with which it an archer can tell you at a distance. so the turrets are twice that distance. anyone climbing over, they can take you out. a military project, as we have already agreed. so not only that, the stairs with then the turrets turned in a particular way so that if you are right handed, the side where you are carrying the blow does not run into someone coming of the stairs the other direction. military thinking at the time. anyhow, that had nothing to do. just an aside. i am on the great wall of china. i don't see any technology anywhere. this is out in the middle of the boonies. by the way, chinese peasants that had come and. i'm guessing there were peasants because they were very san darkened and were not very well dressed, but this is nonetheless a tourist trip for them.

none of them were looking at the wall. delta the photographs themselves next to me. [laughter] apparently i was more interesting than the wall. .. i don't see any electricity. i don't see anything. and i'm having a conversation.

my mother is back home. there was nobody in china saying can you hear me now, can you hear me now? something new was underfoot in china. something was going on that we were in denial with. this is russia, star city, the head of star city. there was a book in their office signed by folks that had been for that so there was a nice ceremony where he comes out and signs the book and a statue standing in bold right out front. it was 10:30 mo warning. the crowd in to his office and he had the cabinet behind him. he opens the cabinet and says time for vodka. it was like okay.

you've got to go with the flow will. so i'm like setting the fatah cut and i am getting kicked under the table. no, your pinkie doesn't stick out when you're down and not cut in russia. here's my point of dhaka that. many more to come plus i want to make sure we have time for q&a. we visited france, england with whom we were told of the common language. we visited all these countries, but here's russia. i don't even know the alphabet. some of them look like a letter of pottery and that's about. but when we started talking about space, there was a bond that all i did not share with

any other communities around the world even though we were sworn enemies during the cold war the plo and embarked on that adventure to explore space. there was a come artery, a kinship even though we didn't speak the same language, but i felt it and it was deep. it was in the culture of our interaction. i will never forget the feeling that i had been in their presence. in the gift shop or all of these trinket's inspired by safe achievements. one of our most cherished possessions in the united states might be one of the youtube tours of my office is a set of goals if i produce that right the sequence of heads of state usually some people you don't

recognize this set of goals had russian spacecraft, the biggest of which the international space station, there are partners and the littlest of which is what? sputnik of course. give me technology, give me the frontier space. we need a set of the europeans representatives getting together to explore space together and embark on space adventures together. we are with the gps condenses a military funded project but once it became a part of our commerce one, the ownership in a way kind

of shifted from the military to the public. our planes are equipped with gps receivers so they can find their way around the world. europe was planning a system called come it's extremely expensive to do this. we are there in the aerospace commission. you can use our gps. what's the matter? we want to build. our worry was if they build it will require all of our airplanes to be equipped with their galileo receivers up in the cost of equipping our airplanes which was already in a bad economic space, so we are at the table and i remember the guy sitting across from me he's kind of smug because we are saying we want you to use this and they were just doing it on their own.

we were almost begging because we had economic issues we had to protect and he was kind of smug and his chair might have been a little higher than mine. sometimes people do that, you know, and i had an epiphany that moment. i said to myself i am angry. i am pissed off not because he was smug but because here is an industry to come here is an enterprise that we and the russians pioneered and we're sitting in a table bargaining as though it's soybeans has the wit is some kind of a train to regulation that we have to resolve i don't have an

experience this date in mind as an american certainly not with regard to technology. we grew up in a time america led the world in technology and when you lead the world you'll never find yourself at the bargaining table bidding for someone you are so far ahead of the world you don't know how to set the same table. that's the america that i grew up in and for me to bear witness to this exchange, i was angry with america because we lost our way. we were coasting on the investments of previous generations thune. you think everything is going well because there is a time delay between innovations and when they reveal themselves economically in another i was

angry. everyone is talking about one this. i love me some saturn five. don't get me wrong. i even have the saturn five tie which i didn't wear today. i were different ones today. that's okay, six of you like my tie. i have about 100 ties. any time people talk about space they kept referencing the golden era. i don't have a problem with that except another revelatory observation came upon me. have you ever seen this pattern

of life up close? there's like four of them. one is standing vertically at huntsville alabama where it was invented and actually, they have to. how greedy of them. one is vertical and it's a model and a mother is in captivity in a museum space where each segment is an actual of rocket park, segments that would have been flown had we continued making it beyond apollo 17, see you have the rocket with pieces separated so you can stand between them and observed so there are the two in huntsville, there's one in florida and one in houston said that is a total of four has someone in the audience agrees. so, you go visit the saturn five rocket and you just can't believe it. you look at one of the nozzles and all of the five activase and they are not big enough to have

a tea party for five you walk the length of it is 32 stories long, 32 stories tall easy the capsule at the top where the astronauts work. this is the famous rocket equation manifest large. it tells you that for every sort of little bit of payload that much more fuel to launch the fuel you haven't burned yet. it is rapidly runs away from you and your space ships have to get exponentially large depending on the size of your payload so that's why the saturn five rocket is 31 stories of fuel and the lunar lander. here we are reflecting this piece of hardware saying look at what we did my gosh.

revelation number for. to lead a low earth orbit and go someplace. we did, the times, eight times by is that right? to i have the count right? apollo 14, 15, 16, 17. thank you. apollo ten, we did it nine times. apollo ten went to the moon, descended towards the lunar surface and then backed out. if you were that astor not you have said i can't hear you. [laughter] you're breaking up. okay. we've got to land. so, where was i before i interrupted myself?

we are reflecting in front of the saturn five the first space ship to take people out of low earth orbit and go somewhere and i said well, is there any piece of technology you can name where you are reflecting in front of the first version of it wondering how they did it? the first cell phone. look at that i wonder how they did that. the first television is a circle this big. the first was half a size of this room. put it in the museum but i don't want to do that. every form of technology there ever was as the decades move on the first version of looks more and more quiet until you put in the corner of the museum and

forget about that yet we are still cherishing the saturn five rocket that's 40-years-old, 45-years-old. so i knew something else was wrong with america. if you keep freezing the first of something it meant nothing came after it. more evidence we stopped dreaming we stopped exploring. so what happens? it ends, 1972, apollo 17 the last of the admissions to the moon. by the way, if science really mattered how many scientists would have gone? we would have put a scientist and a remission but we didn't. one scientist went to the moon, harrison jack schmidt and that was the last mission to the moon. let's not kid ourselves.

kennedy's speech, may 25th, 1961, 6 weeks after it had gone into orbit and had come back safely. we didn't have the vehicle but wouldn't kill one of our astronauts going into orbit. john f. kennedy stands up in the second state of the union address of that year, may 25th, 1961 and utters these prophetic words we will put a man on the moon and return him safely to earth. we collectively have planned our memory of that era and that speech and in the claim we think of kennedy as a visionary come as a charismatic leader who dreams of space like the rest of us get 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. so, go earlier in that same speech what does he say there? how about that? i will tell you. by the become florida's kennedy space center there is a bust of them in the front entrance. a whole granite wall behind them and they have the excerpt of the speech they will put a man on the moon and get him safely back to earth. if the events of the recent weeks he's ander ander clich referencing any indication of the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere that we must show the world that have freedom over tierney it was a battle cry against communism. that's the war driver that led to the check writing that

created the center's and garnered the federal budget that getting to the moon required. why isn't that part of the speech on the granite wall at the kennedy space center? plenty of room. i checked. you can summarize and say tell the commies. go to the moon. it would fit just fine. that's part of the delusional thinking that goes on. so when we stopped going to the moon, upon learning essentially that russia isn't getting to the moon, russia is not going to get their the stop the program. by the way russia beat us in practically every space achievement until then, first satellite, first human in orbit,

first black person in orbit, a member of cuba was friends. first space station, just go down the list for. how will we remember ourselves back then as space pioneers? no. practically every decision we made regarding space was a reaction to something the soviet union did or it was the reaction to something they said they were going to do. we trailed them. another delusional played in that area. now we stopped going to the men. space enthusiasts say we need another leader to continue this because mars is in reach. let's keep going to mars in

there's no reason to go to mars because russia isn't going to mars. so the whole program ends. it just tends. the soviet union didn't come at to the moon. it's that simple. i promise. let's go forward will little further. george herbert walker bush, president of the united states uses this auspicious moment to stand on the steps of that auspicious one of the greatest museums on earth, the museum of the national air and space museum on the 20th anniversary of the apollo landings he says we will build a space station

and a colony on the moon and go on to mars. he wanted to give a kennedy speech. in the speech there was a word driver. it was the growing rhetoric apart. he referenced columbus and the discovery is in our genes as humans and americans. he went down that path, that delusional path. he says let's do this. it will take 40 years but let's do this. so then some folks cost about this plan. $100 trillion. it was doa in congress. half a trillion dollars. as we didn't do it. she didn't have the charisma of kennedy. he certainly had an auspicious occasion but didn't have the

charisma. it's got nothing to do with charisma. what happened? peace broke out in europe. that's what happened in 1989. you want to do a half a trillion dollar project and you are not even at war? who are you kidding kennedy's charisma that may be true but that's not what interfered with anybody following his plan. the budget in constant dollars since you can compare this accurately with $17 billion a year. multiply that by 30 years you've got a half trillion dollars to eight of the half a trillion have already been the flow of money into nasa.

costs have a trillion? you can't afford it? that is a lie and how much money you're going to give them any way. so, does all of this delusional thinking going on out there. the original title of this book submitted to the publisher was a failure to launch. the dreams and the illusion of space enthusiasts. that's too depressing. we can't have that word failure in the title because that would just be bad. >> let me try to wrap up here because i'm just ranting. i will be completing from my eyes. don't get me started. all right. in the decade of the 60's that

was arguably the most turbulent decade in american history since the civil war 100 years earlier. there was a cold war and a halt for lack losing 100 servicemen a week. in southeast asia, vietnam of course there were assassinations, the civil rights movement was on folding weekly on the evening news. campus unrest, protests, students, people getting arrested. the one shining beacon of the decade is the apollo. the end of 1968 apollo eight the first mission to lead lower orbit. if they figure if loop around the moon. coming around the backside of the moon one of the astronauts picked up his camera and saw the

beautiful lunar landscape, pulled up to take a photograph and their rose earth. earth as never before seen by human eyes. that picture is one of the most recognized pictures there ever was. i would agree with the title because of course relative to earth with the moon doesn't rotative always shows a face towards us which means it is always in the sky from the near side of the moon so it doesn't rise. it's either never there or it's always there. puree the the you're moving

around the moon when you do that it comes up it doesn't belong to the it's supposed to come up, all right? assault and in the 1960's? people dream about tomorrow. you don't have to go along. folks in here are old enough to remember. you go all week at most caribbean article in life magazine, "time" magazine talking about the city of tomorrow, the home of tomorrow, the transportation of tomorrow. we never got the flying car specs i'm still angry about that but nonetheless we were imagining a tomorrow and who would enable that tomorrow but scientists and technologists and engineers. they are the enablers of tomorrow's troops. the was understood in a decade. we had in the innovation decade. what do you think the world fair was all about right here in

flushing meadow? it was about to mauro, 1964. we are on our way to the moon in 1964. the gemini program is testing pieces of the moon for feige. one by one each mission more ambitious than the next. 1964 it was all about tomorrow. the unisys fear that isn't just a global of the earth has three rings around it. where do you think they got that idea? john glenn's free orbits around the earth ha. space was inspiring a nation to dream about tomorrow. it was about inspiring innovation. steve jobs and bill gates were 13 or 14 i've got it written here. 13 or 14 and we landed on the moon. i would submit to you in spite

of the 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. there's great spinoffs from nasa. among them is the capacity to perform lisa surgery accurately and inexpensively. lane six surgery predates nasa but it's expensive and it doesn't always work. all right? the algorithms and the guidance that enable the space shuttle to dock with the space station accurately without bumping in and having to try four times brought poured in. how many people here have had lease it? one person in the whole place? [laughter] and she's not wearing glasses.

of course tang predates nasa but it became a beverage choice for them to this day i know not why. the point is if you are into spinoffs, every couple of years nasa comes up with a spinoff. each product the was patented because of space motivation that became a product is described here in every one of these volumes. this is 2,009. since then it is beautifully composed and threatened to give some interesting ones that enables people to hear. even low-tech solutions like da cruz payment. do you ever see turns on the highways that have grooves? nasa figured out that is a good thing to do. you might see why didn't anyone else think about it?

they were not motivated to do so. if someone says i don't want shuttle skipping down the runway it doesn't have propulsion on the runway as it lands so you want that stuff to say straight and not slide off. people think about this because they care about the shuttle that went into space more than they can about your car. that's an important fact. so yes, there are spinoffs and they go on and on and there's a paragraph carefully composed when i talk about sneaking into your room at night and was inspired either directly or indirectly by the space technologies and he would wake up the technological and a deep state of poverty, technological poverty bad eyesight and you go

out and get rained upon because he wouldn't have gotten an accurate weather forecast. i claim this isn't the best reason to do it and there i say science has never caused any government to spend huge sums of money. there is a radar that will pay for science in the hubble telescope's we can do that but above that and depending upon the wealth of the nation determines how much they will agree to do. above that level it takes multiple years to fund and the check writing agencies and political entities the interest has to survive changes in political leadership and fluctuations in the economy. that's why if i say let's go to mars so we can do science if there's a downturn in the economy the press goes to the

unemployment line at the person says i can't feed my family my house has been for post and the reporter says the we are going to mars it doesn't play well. that's why only two drivers work the i don't want to try diver and the i don't want to die poor driver. i claim in the 1960's not only did nasa enervate because you have to innovate when you announce a frontier and we created for ourselves and innovation culture. steve jobs and bill gates didn't end up working for nasa, they were innovative. it's the culture of innovation you are inventing tomorrow. i now claim -- i'm almost done. all right now claim nasa is a

motive of innovations such the world has never seen. not only do you benefit from the innovation of advancing a space frontier if you advance a space frontier in a big way writ large across the head line we are going to the backside of the moon, 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 tourist reasons, scientific reasons, there could be exploited reasons for going into space like wanting to mind the moon. rps search if you create a healthy space platform where you stood up rockets with whatever you need for the task at hand you don't make a destination

based program. i'm not going to say let's just go to mars because you get to mars and then what. if you are letting out a system in the united states you don't say it's only go to los angeles. that's not how you do it. to put roads everywhere and people choose where they want to go and when they want to go for whatever reasons they come up with. so, from ehealth the space program is one that can choose to go anywhere. it can be military reasons, economic reasons, whatever are the reasons that confront us. so now when you innovate and its writ large, you have grand adventures that echo through the educational pipeline. i stand up in front of an eighth grade class and say who wants to be an aerospace engineer. you can design the plane as fuel-efficient as your parents.

one area. who wants to be an aerospace engineer so that you can design an airplane that can navigate the rarefied atmosphere of mars. i'm going to be getting the best students in the class. not everybody cares about fuel efficiency. we want them to. but that isn't how you get smart people to express their smarts. we tell ourselves we live in a country. a smart person is interested in what ever they are interested in you want to be able to do that because when they do, everybody benefits. there's all this talk. why did advances in a roundabout way. let's put money directly where the problem is. no pity if it doesn't work that way. ploch into a hospital with a

ledger. make a list of every machine in the hospital with and on and off switch. every machine that is brought into the service of diagnosing the condition of your body without cutting you open. you will learn every one of those machines is based on a principal of physics discovered by a physicist who has had no interest in madison back to the x-ray themself. the very first nobel prize for physics went to him. that was not in physiology it was in physics. its physiological applications for manifest immediately of course. all i see my bones on the photographic plate. take it over to the hospital. go for it. i want to get the next thing going in my lab. so you need medical technologies to create the machines a cross pollination of disciplines.

the entire year radiology department of a hospital is based on nuclear physics. the magnetic imager probably the most useful in the hospital today is based on a principle called nuclear magnetic resonance. it's got the other nuclear, survey remove it from the hospital device because it speaks people. get into this nuclear machine. that's based on a principle who happened to be life college physics professor who basically he was doing astrophysics concerning himself with the behavior of atomic nuclei in the media. so you will find all of the frontiers of science.

now how are you going to motivate that? all i am saying is when you go into space everybody knows about it. if you just fund the national science foundation the same kids in the eighth grade class has anyone ever stood up and said when i grew up by one to be a researcher. i've never seen that. i'm sorry. but they have heard of maseth and so has the rest of the world. i would say double the budget. right now it is half of a penny on your tax dollars. did you know that? 100% of everyone who tells me why are we spending money of their and not here we are spending too much out there. 100% of them did not know that nasa's budget is one-half of 1% of their tax dollars. and i've measured this out to be as you can take a dollar bill and cut horizontally one-half of 1% of that risk.

it doesn't even get you into the eink. [applause] then we could go to mars in a big way. we can go back to the moon and put a call me on the moon just because gingrich's republican doesn't mean he has an okay idea about this. what might be the motivation that could be economic. what ever is the reason if you are advancing a frontier you innovate and when you innovate you invent 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 in a recession. jobs are going overseas.

there's not enough in the pipeline. everybody wants to put a band-aid on each problem. jobs going overseas let's give tax incentives so the companies will want to keep their jobs here. we need better scientists this would make better science teachers and here are these band-aids going around. if we go into space in a big way and it's writ large across the newspapers we resurrect the innovation culture from 40 years ago. nobody today is thinking about tomorrow. nobody is thinking about the world's fair. i don't remember the last time i saw an article dreaming about the city of tomorrow. they all ended. you know when the and it? after we stopped going to the moon. so i submit that a healthy nasa

is a healthy america and as nasa's future goes, so too does 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 if writ large on the paper. they will be called for engineers to help us go ice fishing where there is an ocean of water for billions of years. we are going to dig through the soil and look for life. look at the portfolio today. it's got biology, chemistry, physics, geology and aerospace engineers, mechanical engineers represented in the portfolio it pumps that and it is a fly wheel that society caps for innovation

i don't know of another force of nation as powerful, and in the next generation we go in because we need to stoke our economy and that is one of the big reasons any nation has ever done anything science will piggyback it. did he pay for the voyage? no, they've had other motivations. science piggybacked this and i am quick -- okay with that. one last thing before i end. this book came out two weeks

ago. thank you. sorry. [applause] >> because the light just told you such as on politics and on economics, what has happened is the interest in this book has crossover and out of the circle of space enthusiasts and the the interests of economists and politicians. on an enchanted by this of foreign affairs magazine excerpt of the first chapter of this a cover story the case for space. this land is in the lack of every single congressman in washington. so it is in a week of this book being released and this article appearing i got a phone call.

i got a phone call that said we want you to testify in front of the senate. generally i don't like speaking directly to politicians and educators and scientists and it's my preference to speak to the electorate to educate and to eliminate and in that way you choose their representatives that you can and in the best interest of your communities. for me to go straight to a politician that is representing a million people for an entire state, i'm not comfortable doing that. so i testified it's not on youtube, the testimony is six minutes of testimony, and i said i don't know if anybody is listening. it ended up on youtube and the

past week it has 200,000 viewers so i realized -- some of the comments are very moving. people said they'd almost started crying because they are appealing for all of us to dream about tomorrow again. and i don't know of another force that will enable that. the pathway that i just described. so i would like to believe that there is -- what is happening is something deep within us all that wants to mauro to come again and will certainly enjoy the economic benefits that come from it. it shifts our fishing from worrying about where the george balzar -- where the jobs or that issue fourth innovations jobs that are high-level jobs that are so innovative decant go overseas because they haven't figured out how to do it yet.

that's the state of the country that i want to enter. [applause] i like messing with the sound people. can i have gillmor volume in the microphone? more? more? thank you. this is the only part of the book that i'm going to read it verbatim 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 as a national aeronautics civilian space agency. while i was born of my mother in the east bronx. [applause] so, the yearlong celebration of our golden anniversaries which began the day after we turned 49 the occasion to reflect on our past and present and future. i was 3-years-old when john glenn first orbited earth. i was eight when you lost astronauts in that tragic fire of the apollo capsule on launchpad. all i was ten when you landed buzz aldrin on the moon, and i was 14 when you stopped going to the moon altogether. over that time it was exciting for you in america but the

vicarious thrill of the journey so prevalent in the heart and mind if others is absent from my emotions. i was too young to be an astronaut but i also knew my skin color was much too dark for you to picture me as a part of that adventure. not only that, even though you are a civilian agency, your most celebrated astronauts were military parties at a time the war was becoming less and less popular. during the 1960's a civil rights movement was more real to me than it was to you. in fact it took a director from vice president johnson in 1963 to force you to hire black engineers at your prestigious marshall space flight center in alabama. i found the correspondence in your archives. do you remember?

james webb then head of nasa wrote to the pioneer who headed a center and was a chief engineer at the space program. the letter bluntly directs him to address the lack of equal employment opportunities and to collaborate with alabama and tuskegee to identify the train recruit into the nasa huntsville family. in 1964, you and i had not yet turned six when i saw the picket outside of the newly built apartment complex of our choice in the riverdale section of the bronx. they were protesting to prevent the negro families, mine included come from moving. i'm glad their efforts failed. the buildings were called perhaps prophetically the sky view apartments on the bronx i

would leader to train my telescope on the universe. my father was active in a civil rights movement working under new york city to create opportunities for youth in the ghetto as the inner city was called. year after year the forces operating against the effort were huge. abject racism and assassinated leaders supporting the monthly advances in space exploration from mercury to jim and i to apollo i was watching america do all it could to marginalize who i was and what i wanted to become in life. i look to for guidance and vision statements to fuel my ambitions but you were not there for me. i shouldn't blame you for the society role. it was a symptom of america's

actions, not a cause. but nonetheless you should know. i'm the only one of my generation to become an astrophysicist in spite of your achievements. to my exploration i turned to the libraries and books on the kosmas of bookstores and my telescope. after the starts through the years in schools we are becoming an astrophysicist it seems that time to beat most resistance i became a professional scientist i became an astrophysicist. over the decades you've come a long way including most recently initiated commercially endorsed business that finally gets us back out of the low earth orbit.

whoever doesn't recognize the value of this adventure to the nation's future soon will as the rest of the developed into the living world passes us by in every measure of technological and economic strength. not only that, today. from your senior level managers to your most in need of astronauts congratulations you now belong to the entire citizenry. examples are disemboweled. but i especially a remember in 2004 when the public took ownership of the hubble telescope the most beloved unmanned mission they all spoke loudly ultimately reversing the threat the telescope might not be to extend its life in the decade. they transcendent images of the cosmos that spoke to us all else did the personal profiles of the space shuttle astronauts who deployed in service and the

scientists who benefited. not only that, i joined the ranks of your most trusted three dysart dewey on the advisory council. i can to recognize it when you are at your best nothing in this world can inspire the dreams of the nation the way you can. who dreams carried by a river of ambitious students eager to become scientists, engineers and the service of the greatest quest that there ever was. you come to represent a fundamental part of america's identity not only to itself, but to the world. so, now that we've both turned 49 and we are well into our 50th orbit around the sun, i want you to know i feel your pain and share your joy and i look forward to seeing you back on

the moon, but don't stop there. mars beckons as to those beyond. birthday buddy. even if i haven't always tempered, now your humble servant. [applause] [applause] [applause]

>> we ran all along i am sorry but i want to devote some time to your questions. we have a microphone at the front of each of oil and i welcome comments about anything are everything that's been bugging you or eating your critical for support of. yes, let's start here. >> you're talking about the education once people get more involved in the dim the can put engineering aside to suppress education. you've got the state legislature's saying that education isn't [inaudible] it some sort of a program for welfare and education at the same time universities are putting them because they're more expensive you have a presidential candidate coming into colleges for small biz and the only thing was to be

brainwashed by liberal professors. >> i think we get the point. >> i want to finish with new jersey that he is cutting back education in using the money to give tax benefits to the billionaires'. what's going on and what can we do about this and why is this happening? you'd think people would be looking to the future not trying to destroy. >> i try not to speak to politicians. the question, you heard the question [inaudible] for the fate of the nation whose health and secure the 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 as health 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 then a fundamental part and i mention of who our elected officials or. we don't have to wait from one official to the next to see who has an education idea. it's our idea. i will give you an example. what would you do if he were the head of nasa? i don't want to because they go to the president intended a budget that's what you have to spend. i kind of like the fact that i'm not in the command -- to the president from just a citizen, that means the president works for me. under those conditions you can motivate under the conditions you motivated the electorate to

demand that which is in the best interest of this nation and to the extent that we failed our leaders will fail. it's that simple. >> how do you get past this propaganda that's antieducation? you can't get news coverage. >> i am happy to say that there are youtube videos one mind a viral the last few days with 2 million viewers that is celebrating what is to know about space. this is a measure of the appetite people have for this adventure, and i tweet creepy things sometimes but i tweet and everyone resonates with someone to read and send it to there's so i have 360,000 waterfall the worst and it's not just because i smile at them. it's because there's something

that they are eating that i am feeding them and i am feeding them the universe. there's a cosmic appetite out there that remains to be fully served and i am just a piece of that puzzle and there are others out there in the u.k.. he's more popular in the u.k. than ever in america. there is in fact hope in this world and it's represented by the electorate and not the elected officials. [applause] in my humble opinion. >> the way i see it 20th century the lungs to america and russia as well as basic exploration and now the national space station as one ever where there has been some collaboration at international level. you talk a lot about the war and

economic being motivation for the country to do it alone but what about the cooperation globally with china, india, japan, russia, america we don't always going to the directions that come together to do something a grand vision so to speak and despite being a big skeptic of the u.n. and how they function is that hope for us? >> the international space station is the greatest collaboration of the nation's other than the waging of the war in terms of the size of 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 am reminded of the scene in a film of 2010 which ostensibly was the sequel to 2001 where the russians and americans are collaborating trying to find

life on jupiter but this is still during the cold war and there's a cold war incident at an embassy or l.i. country and it gets really ugly and the silos are open to have to empty each other's embassies from the respective countries and up comes the phone call at jupiter and is as they have to lead the american ship and the russian ship because we are having these problems down here on earth. that's just stupid and you know that's how it would happen because the politics or driving all of this. so, i'd like to believe that collaboration keeps them at peace with each other and since we're being economically driven in this idea everybody could have a piece of that ply and would stop all the nations of the world's or in desperate need

of the greater need of an economic boost than even we are, so i agree in the context of economic growth it would be a boon to everyone. thank you. >> i have a real estate question. i am a new york city resident and so are you, correct? >> yes i am. >> i have no idea where this question is going. [laughter] no idea. >> as it pertains to sea level rise, i feel more comfortable knowing as a resident of new york city. >> so i can drown all along side of you. ..

will. >> but i would like to see is an investment in a geo- engineering good people among us want to

travel among mars. that is a cool thought. turn mars into an oasis and we can all just live there. if you have the power to geo- engineer, you can control sea levels on earth like it is a trivial homework problem for school. i try not to run away from problems. i see this as interesting. why not solve the problem of the melting ascap's rather than to distract yourself with what apartment to buy to avoid it? [applause] [applause] >> yes, sir. >> doctor tyson from i just had a question. you say economic incentives is one of the main drivers of future exploration in space. i was wondering if you could see corporations been at the fore front of the space shuttle to

the world. >> never. even newt gingrich, while he is pandering, as politicians do regionally, to the space community of florida where you find kennedy space center. no. no. anytime. this is important. you are seated, except the people lined up. if something is expensive, which space exploration is, if something is dangerous, which space exploration is. if something has unmeasured risks, which space exploration is, it cannot be done by private enterprise because you cannot create a capital market valuation of it. the way it works is i am looking

for investors. what is my return on my investment? here are the risks and's or other costs, interest rate of return. you cannot do that for something that expensive and that danger is that you've never done before. you cannot get investors for that. you could never have gotten investors for that. columbus was paid by government. he drew the maps and found out where the trade winds are. he found out where the hostile folks were where he landed, and where the happy folks are. he found out where the wood supply list of fixes boats. then he goes back, and mountains are understood come and then comes the trading company. the railroads across the country. somebody had to acquire that land. it was called the government. someone had to figure out where the dead indians were in the bad

indians were. somebody had to figure out where the mountains and valleys were. it started with thomas jefferson and other explores. then he had the expeditions and other private enterprise comes. what role could private enterprise play? that would be lower orbit. nasa has nasa has been there done that. it is dangerous, but we understand the dangers and we can quantify them. sure, would nasa pay a private enterprise to take us to the space station? i don't have a problem with that. let private and enterprise take tourists into orbit. i don't have a problem with that. 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, good.

but it will never be the frontier of space that will always need to be reserved for the wisdom of government. thank you. [applause] [applause] >> hello, two-part question based on my trip to huntsville. one is the saturn five is awesome, but the stuff they are talking about, where they can go and what they can do, that is really awesome. what happened to all that stuff that was happening and fell apart. >> why did we stop dreaming? >> yes. parts you, my son will be 19 this month and he's getting your book. he has spent 10 years in math and physics, he's talented and good at it. but he wants to be a math teacher. we are losing our best and brightest because the drive is gone. a everybody give up that whole generation? >> is not good enough just to

have a science teacher in the classroom. when signed teacher is gone, something has to fan the flame. occasionally have to reignited. >> but -- >> as anyone who barbecues unshed barbecues knows. >> but what we do at this generation of kids that have that when taken out of their sails, who a couple of years ago were still into it and then heard no more space travel. >> i wouldn't say wind wind out of sails, i would say rocket fuel out of the launch vehicles. it is a lost generation in that regard. that is the grim reality of it. there is no polite way to put it. but they're very higher global. they would just not be working in the fields in which they were trained. specifically, fields which they had ambitions to work in. that is lost generation of americans in the 21st century. have a nice day.

[laughter] >> i just wanted to expand on the hypothesis. i think it is the wise mission where they map of the killer asteroids? >> many missions have the capacity to map them. wiser is an acronym. >> is a defense project at that level. while we are visiting the solar system, which now becomes our backyard, oh, there's an asteroid coming. well, strap on discrimination of rockets and take it out. i don't want a reason to from the space program to be so that we can do select an asteroid. because once we inventory them all and find find out the next london needs deflection is in

100 years from the funding goes away. >> would not create spinoff and what is the amount of be unknown? >> all of this is great spinoffs. i'm not arguing the spinoffs. there are always spinoffs. these are not the spinoffs i'm talking about. i'm talking about the effect on a culture where everybody wants to innovate whether or not there in the space program. that is the real economic driver. >> you don't think saving the world is -- >> it will quadruple funding, and then we get a better management to be asked turkoman we find out its operating system and all the funding dries up just as it did as we landed on the moon. that is the wrong starter motivation to help the space program. >> okay, you don't think -- >> it will work but it will not take up. >> is that a bridge too far? >> are good on asteroids are on

timescales longer than reelection time of our representatives. [laughter] [applause] [applause] [applause] [applause] 80% of congress runs for reelection every two years. 88% of senators and congressmen are on the block every two years. and i say there is an asteroid that will come in a hundred years. i am not going there. it will work when the time comes. fine. but you know, it might not work. 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. you know something, if we go extinct by an asteroid, yet had a space program available to us, to have deflected it, we would be the laughing stock of aliens in the galaxy. [laughter] [applause] >> what, they had opposable thumbs and a space program, yet they went extinct? [laughter] like the pea brained dinosaurs before them?

[laughter] they had an excuse. they didn't have opposable thumbs. i would just take a few more questions. i don't know if we'll get to everybody. love the hack, by the way. >> my question is it seems to me that competition is what -- competition between united the united states and capitalism, competition between the united states and communism. there doesn't seem to be -- there doesn't seem to be a need for competitiveness. there is no competition out. >> the question is back then we were in competition for sure. it was a military contest. right now we have an economic competition going on with china. i would not 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 i want to whisper to them. i need you to leak a memo. [laughter] it doesn't even have to be true, just leaked a memo that says you want to put military bases on mars. [laughter] we would be on mars in two years. you know how easy that would be in china? mars is already read, write? you can mark that. you got that one. competition does sort of fuel fires with regard to the collaboration on the space station, collaboration, i think, is better than non-collaborating, 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 beat them

. i try to be honest with ourselves what it is to be human and what it is to get the job done. here's what here is what i will do. we will in the line with who is standing now. i'm going to give you soundbite answers. i am going to pretend i am on jon stewart. that way we will get to you quickly and we will call it a night. >> i was giving a short answer by jon stewart john stuart a few days ago. my question is, you gather enough collective will of the people to gather the economic driver to actually make this happen, get the budget going, something longer than the particular term of congress or a president.

you mentioned greeting a platform to do anything to be dreamed of at that time. what would your idea or proposal be for a launch loop, space elevator? >> i'm not going to prescribe the next steps that people take. that will be a function of the creativity of engineers and technologists of the day. maybe they want to build a space elevator, i'll write? that is a cheap way to get to that geosynchronous orbit. beyond earth is the name of the exhibit. curated by my colleague. you build a capacity to go anywhere and let scientists decide i need to go here and there, and geopolitics says we have to do this. the military says we have to put a laser beam over here, and other folks say i want to visit them. it will run its course. as long as you are advancing a frontier, i don't care what the destination is.

>> you have no particular preference? >> i have no preference. all of space is my preference meant i wanted to ask about colonizing the moon. i really don't think i could ever vote for newt gingrich. but let's just say -- let's say obama was right and let's do it, we are going to the moon. what are the actual realities of a moon colony and what would that entail? and could we do that? >> i think a moon colony is ambitious. there is no air on the moon and no cattle. there is no grass. it is a little ambitious, i think. is it crazy? no, it's not crazy. it's not more crazy then queen isabella saying columbus, go find the end of the earth. >> not having an atmosphere? >> yes, that's the sticking point right there. [laughter] wherever, must win, he could

still breathe. these are challenges. maybe a moon colony won't pan out because you can't get enough interest. but there always studies you can do on the moon. the military today uses the moon as a strategic place. lunar space is the new world and the new high ground, which is the entire space between earth and the moon's orbit. there 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. just because people say -- they say oh, 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 one space, why not manage that down here? we fail at that badly. i'm giving no reason -- i'm not even hopeful to think that there won't be space wars.

i wish i could be hopeful. i don't have that much confidence in human conduct. maybe the colonies won't pan out, but there will be plenty of stuff to do in space, i promise. maybe the, money is the place to go -- it is a one week torture. >> i want to do it. >> weirdos spacex but in all of this? >> they are trying to make a vehicle with the efficiency of private enterprise that will substitute with nasa's vehicle to go back to lower orbit. >> are they going to substitute for the money that would've gone to nasa for they would just. >> instead of sending their own people, they will do it with private enterprise. the same way that the postal

service does it. >> so it's a good thing? >> yes. spacex was founded by elon musk, the creator of paypal. he was 32 years old or something. one of the space billionaires who decided he loved space so much that he's trying to make his own spacecraft. >> how old are you? >> eight years old. >> you are eight years old, that is so cool. [applause] [applause] >> is this past your bedtime? go on. >> i want to go to mars. i was wondering -- [applause] [applause] >> let the record show our eight year old wants to go to mars and no one else has yet to ask that of themselves. go ahead. >> i was wondering what it would

take to get their. >> well, you were the age, right now of who we would -- in other words, when we go to mars, which i would like to think it's in the next couple of decades, you will then become the age of those astronauts. i am too old. i will be may be dead by then. but you, you will be just right. you are just right for an 8-year-old. so, it is dangerous. you will be a long time away from home. probably you will want to get and take some videos and books with you. 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 phone calls -- video calls with your friends. plus, nasa is talking to you all the time. it is a long voyage, and there's still some challenges. there is radiation from the sun that we don't know how to shield you from.

i see those as engineering problems, not physics problems, and we have a lot of clever engineers out there. it is nine months to mars. then you have to wait until earth and mars line back leinbach up in their orbits to come back. that is a couple of years. the whole round-trip is about three or four years. you will be three or four years away from home. as long as you are okay with that, we will send you to mars. you sign up. >> that gives me hope. how do we communicate with those who say on facebook and twitter kate and how do we get them to communicate on the telephone? >> the problem is not that they are looking down on their technology. the problem is that we are not engaged in a project that is grand enough to compel them to look up.

[applause] [applause] >> that is the challenge. >> okay, thank you. >> can cannot give you an example? >> it is a quick example, but i am not being quick. do you know what tweet ups are? you have a launch and there are a certain number of people on twitter. they are tweeting everything. but twitterverse learns about what is going on vicariously. one of the nasa launches gave a talk to the tweet up community. you know what i said? this is the biggest testimony of my life. i want to be so compelling to my delivery in this audience, they will not even want to tweak because it will distract them from what i am saying on the stage. so i started speaking and i reversed my best stuff.

it is flowing and going, and nobody's looking up at their device because what was coming out from up here, with a greater message than anything they could have possibly been doing on their smartphone. don't blame the technology, blame the absence of vision. [applause] [applause] >> i have a philosophical question. would you rather die out or live forever? [laughter] [laughter] >> i bought into the concept of a natural light. philosophers like having this kind of debates. but i never believed that the options available to create a person are ever limited by the choices offered by a philosopher. [laughter]

[applause] [applause] [applause] for example, there is the lifeboat and there is only a certain amount of food for four. but there are six people. so you throw them overboard order otherwise everyone dies -- these choices, and i am saying, maybe we can invent a way to draw fish from the ocean. that way we don't have to throw them overboard. i would like lucian's to problems rather than the blunt abc. part of this 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. that is my unfulfilling answer to you. [applause] [applause] >> yes? >> indeed, and that's why we don't have a cache tag posted so we don't get distracted by twittering about it. the early observation about the

politicians and talking about the need to need to be antiscience and anti-indentation is -- especially when they're doing it with video phones and smartphones, which wouldn't exist if they had their way. >> this is part of the hypocrisy of it all or it especially to people that say i don't need the space program. i don't need that to know. i have my gps and my weather channel, so why do i need to spend money on space? you get a lot of this going on. >> dr. tyson, the big expensive rockets, which is relevant to technology, have they been looking at antigravity, just like in the early hd world with earth to the moon or whatever? >> from earth to the moon. among the research that is going

on, it does not include antigravity. at antigravity is a pretty remote notion with respect to the laws of physics. so you don't find people who are physics fluent to devote their lives to antigravity. the people who do antigravity are people who think that loss on 10 laws of physics are guidelines rather than laws. these are the same communities who do, perpetual motion machines. it violates no laws of physics. okay, maybe you will succeed. but i am so confident that he won't, then i am just going to go about my way. don't expect a lot of money to be devoted to antigravity devices. nonetheless, there are other challenges of propulsion. there is the ion drives and we are way behind -- you are absolutely right.

it is world war ii propulsion technology, and we are so far behind that it is embarrassing. it is embarrassing. i tweeted recently. i said, what i said? i said, the state of the country now is that i would be embarrassed if an alien landed. i would be embarrassed to show them what our technology is. [laughter] you want to do a one off on the aliens. it's like, i'm sorry, alien. >> a couple of comments and questions. >> you have to make them quick because we're running long. >> thank you for -- say that louder. >> she is like my pr agent. she said 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 through the book. this gives, kind of like biscuits. if you could read it closer to the microphone. >> would a lunar sure be more popular than jersey shore -- >> a lot of effort went into this. and the organization of this effort was made possible -- there is an editor's name on the cover of this book. he is my longtime editor from natural history magazine. this is ever that i've ever had about our past, present and future in space. to coordinate those thoughts into something corps parent requires an editor. i just want to publicly thank him for that. did you have a question?

>> i love the sentence the business of saving the planet requires commitment. you have a question to bounce back at us to take with us when we leave for further thought? >> yes, my question for you to take back with you would be, why are you spending more energy trying to convince others of the value of this epic adventure? you can do that by letters to the editor, updates, any of the above. if you have an opinion, share it. thank you for that. we have six left and then we are done. >> i was new to this whole space thing. and i wanted to learn more. is this some kind of contest, maybe somebody best we could add some comedians in on a sunday, i can check this thing out, and engage further in this conversation and learn a couple of things? >> you want to learn more about space? [laughter] >> something that i could tweak to my friends.

>> not everyone is a reader out there. i understand. i'm trying to hit every angle here. i tweak and i am a host of a radio show called start talk radio. [applause] [applause] >> i have a comedian as my cohost and my guests are not scientists. people from pop culture. we explore ways that science influences their lives. i recommend that you check it out. i have had morgan freeman, whoopi goldberg, joan rivers, john stuart, -- i said to joan, would he do the aliens come? she said, i don't care if they come, just as long as they are single and cute. [laughter] [laughter] >> it is a celebration of science. i'm trying to get it out there. so people don't fear it. 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, watching walter cronkite tell us what today's news was. >> to clarify, i would check out start talk radio? >> start talk radio.net. >> i will try to make this as brief as i possibly can. i am one of the lost generations you just spoke about. i'm 32, i will be 33 this fall. i live next to him air force base. i watched the muscles cope with my father until challenger haven't have in common the shuttle happening in my town was canceled. i have an 8-year-old daughter who sings along with science books with your voice and others talking about -- >> thank you. >> series of creative youtube video that they are very creative and hugely popular.

>> she sings -- her most favorite is a case for mars. she talks about going to mars herself. i want to say thank you to the other little girl who is exactly my daughter's age. >> okay. >> coming back or not, there is a deep understanding on my part as a physics major and educator of our connection to the universe. as much as i want to believe in life elsewhere, is a scientist, i want to see it. until we dissensions have seen that somewhere else, i feel like it is part of that motivation that you think of and mentioned. for us to get off planet. i don't care if it is an asteroid, i don't care if it's this ongoing red in 5 billion years. if we stay here, we are doomed. as far as we know, we are it. >> this is a point that was made

by stephen hawken where he said we have to be a multi- planet species, otherwise we are doomed because something bad could happen to her at, a virus, asteroid or what have you. here's my rebuttal to that, if i may. to may i finish the question? >> yes. >> do you feel the motivation like that is valuable as a component? the economics are part of beating our species and our country and ourselves. >> i don't think it is a good enough driver because i don't believe it. >> okay. >> i will tell you i. >> okay. >> hawking made this point. we have to be a multi- planet species. with all the eggs in one basket, you go extinct. what might be that which threatens earth? is it an asteroid, the one that rendered 70% of all species extinct 65 million years ago? the yucatán commensal of mexico? it was in mexico, back then by the way.

whatever the dinosaurs called it is what it was. we are going to be a multi- planet species, and i hinted to this before, we have to go to some other planet. it would have to be mars. we have to care for mars. if we have the power to ship a billion people there, we can deflect the asteroid. the scale of that operation, relative to whatever would take to protect us, i think there is no contest. you deflect the asteroid and you find a cure for the virus. you stop the volcano. you realign 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 as the solution is the solution to that problem, rather than running away to

another planet so that it can become toast. then you have two planets and the asteroid headed is one of them, what you do with everyone on that planet? sorry, we are the safe ones, goodbye. it is not a practical -- [laughter] >> if you have the power of geo- engineering on that scale, you don't need to leave earth. you make a earth exactly as you want to be. if you have the power to fix mars, you can fix earth. in any way that you choose. this is my contention. >> if you have the power enough to fix mars, don't you have power to get somewhere outside the solar system? >> possibly. so we will go there, too. but the motivation wouldn't be so that we won't die on earth. i just don't see that. i am not convinced by the arguments. >> okay, so you started off with the three motivators and one of them dropped out really quick.

isn't the whole, kind of glorification's of kings, is in that religious fear of death and wanting to have your name in the history books alongside buzz aldrin? is not so with his? >> it could be with the individual, but right, i'm talking about large-scale projects that divert a major fraction of your gross national product -- gross domestic product. human capital or financial capital. just because he wanted to stone, the cost doesn't -- your tombstone and appear men are not the same thing. [laughter] the pearman, yes committee want to live forever, but they have the power to do it. it is an expensive tombstone. people did it in the service of the pharaoh. he has the power. the people who built the pearman did not. it is a power thing.

it is a fear factor. as well. we are all too small as individuals? >> unless you working. our version of a king to do this would be bill gates. say to bill, take a smile. she would be like our king, and he would be spending the crown jewels to do this. i have talked to them. i will call him up and we will find out two i have two questions. did you celebrate pi day yesterday? >> i did celebrate pi day yesterday. for those of you who are not deep enough to know what that sentence just man, on march 14, if you write it out in american-style, it would be 3.14. and that is pi.

the pi geeks celebrated it. i decided to tweak something on pi day. i got pi to 12 decimal places. that is good enough -- that's good enough to get that circumference of the earth. >> my second question is, what is your favorite three numbers in pi. >> i like the first three. [laughter] that gets most of the way there, okay? thank you. >> you referred to engineers and biologists as being important for future. how is a historian important for future. >> how is this story and important. that i know about human conduct

that we need to put into play going forward comes to me from an analysis of history. if you don't know the conduct of humans and what motivates them and the relationships between nations, just, you know, go back home. you are not useful out there if you want to bring real solutions to real problems. historians are really important in this. particularly, historians who put things in context, which is what most of them do. rather than just retell a timeline of events. context matters. attitudes matter for cultures matter. i don't want to know what war you fought and what chamber placed to did i want to know what was in the hearts and minds of the people who were in our country. the attitudes that they had. what led one country to war against another for a thousand years? what led to one country cannot have wars? what is going on in their

culture and in their minds? by all means. if you want to major in history, go for it. it will be harder to find a job, but other than that -- yes. the last two questions. these better be awesome questions. >> i just have a quick question and comment. my question is, you often talk about the whole government sector of the government having to do it first and then private sector and private enterprise. >> not because i wanted to be that way, that's just my read of history. >> do you believe to get further than the edge of the solar system, we need to unify 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 governments. 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 write to the nearest star to the sun and 50,000 years later. so you need to be really fertile, or we need some other way -- some other understanding of the fabric of space-time, we need something else to the longevity of humans. mars is within a few years. that is within our 80 year life expectancy. traveling to the other star does not. for the moment, i am good with the telescope to get me there. there are plenty of destinations, including a whole new swap of dwarf planets, pluto included, get over it. [laughter] no one says we have to visit a traditional planet.

there are many of rocky surfaces that would welcome our footprints. >> i have a quick comment. i read this calvin and hobbes strip and it said, the way right now that we know that there is intelligent life out there is that it hasn't tried to contact us yet did i have to say, i am completely -- i completely agree with that. >> i said that same thing, but in a more severe way. i said aliens have actually visited us. okay? there are two branches of that comment. one is that they visited us, but they landed in times square and no one noticed. okay? were in hollywood and no one noticed. another one, a more terrifying prospect, is that they have visited us, they have inspected when what we are come and have concluded that there is no sign of intelligent life on earth. i have to ask how old you are?

>> i am 11. >> welcome. it's a pastor bedtime? >> no. >> okay. do you have a question? >> yes. you are tweets in your book, are they just for fun? in chapter four, you're talking about aliens. you say any suspicious of them being evil is more a reflection of our fear about how we would treat an alien species if we found them than any actual knowledge about how an alien species would treat us, and then you go to space tweet seven. how it blocks us student mucus droplets so aliens are say. we are listening to them right now. [laughter] [laughter] [applause] >> i warned you about my tweets, deny?

i forgot why i talked about sneaking inside of a space helmet. because that is a nasty thing to think about. he -- i make them a tweet and share these random that's another one i had as if our blood were based not on iron, turning it read, red, but instead on copper, turning it green, then what color would the stoplights be? [laughter] [laughter] i am just saying. it was a thought i had, so it's we did it. there were people waiting back, my mind is blown come i can't figure it out. i had another one -- there is a url shortening are called bit l.

wyatt. -- i decided to just test it. and i took bit.ly, i put that into the url shortening her, and dig up longer. i have to tweak that. right? the url shortening made it longer. it has nothing to do with astrophysics. here is one for you. this will keep you awake at night. if pinocchio declared that my nose is about to grow, what would his nose actually do? [laughter] [laughter] 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 that it should iave grown.