thank. you thank you. greetings and salutations over three hundred fifty years ago dutch scientists christiane discovered the moon titan and that saturn had rings not ears as galileo had theorized then italian scientists don't do many cassini found four of saturn's moons and the separation within saturn's rings now known as the cassini division flash forward a few centuries to when nasa and the european space agency and the italian space agency came to gather for a mission that by that time was already decades in the making the cassini quickens

mission was part of nasa was flab flagship program to explore a very own solar system constructed at the jet propulsion lab in california it successfully launched on october fifteenth nineteen ninety seven aboard a titan for the centaur launch vehicle from cape canaveral it consisted of the cassini orbiter and the probe on her six hundred seventeen the day in space cassini flew by the planet venus coming out one point within three hundred seventy miles of the planet of love she made two more flybys of venus and one each of jupiter beaming back images and scans that scientists are still researching in two thousand cassini became only the seventh known craft to make its way through the asteroid belt and provided scientists with the first size estimates on the asteroid implement preliminary evidence that it may have different material properties than we previously believed seven years later because he found its way to saturn and on october twenty fourth of two thousand and four. awakens probe injected and land on

the moon of titan having traveled at a speed of sixteen point four kilometers per second and covering a distance of about three thousand four hundred seventy four million kilometers on january thirteenth two thousand and five cassini made its descent on titan he gets and found frozen water pebbles how to understand the methane mystery of that moon dry river beds and lakes and evidence of a subsurface ocean and that's when cassini moved on to discover a sponge like electric moon known as hyperion that nearly caught cassini under tendrils without an atmosphere hyperion collects electrostatic charges this knowledge could be vital to future space travelers and robots near planetary objects without atmosphere in two thousand and fifty cassini collected data that scientists say shows the icy mood events alatas would theoretically be the home to methane producing life forms these microbes would be fed by the hydrogen in the air but more importantly it is

a sign that life of some kind is possible in places other than earth the rings of saturn have baffled because seaney dozin and collected images and hard data that shows the rings of saturn are the most extensive and unique of any ring system of any planet known to humankind almost entirely made of ice because he provided that this incredible prove that this incredible system of rings is nearly two hundred eighty two kilometers wide but a mere one kilometer thick cassini also brought images of the phenomenal great northern storm which did its own version of the mythical or a burroughs trick and like the serpent eating its own tail in two thousand and four cassini watched the storm literally you did so and now here we are thirteen years after she arrived in saturn and twenty years after she was launched the cassini orbiter has taken our final dive into the atmosphere of saturn destroying herself so the no bacteria or microbes that made it into the probe could end up on saturn the purity of saturn's world retained. her last transmission was on

september fifteenth twenty seventeen at seven fifty five am eastern standard time a mere thirty second seconds later than expected because he vaporized while hurling herself at seventy six thousand miles per hour and her final transmission was marked in the history books because each change the way we looked at space how we think the worlds were formed where they may move to how we got here and what may lie beyond our eyesight she propelled science in a way no human could to cassini we say thank you and in the words of lord byron she walks in beauty like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies and all that's best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes thus mellowed to that tender light which heaven to god a day denies now let's look to the skies talk with a real astronaut and start watching the hawks.

but like you let our guard. thank you thank you. thank you thank you. welcome everybody to watching the hogs i am tired of the lawless and joining us in the hocks nest is american engineer former nasa astronaut entrepreneur motivational speaker and engineering consultant lee writes out helo's thank you so much for being here today of all days oh my you're thank you for having me lou are you you've commanded the international space station probably one of the single most

important scientific met him in. every time next sickest seanie what is so important about these cooperative space missions like cassini because we're talking about multiple nations over two three decades something that our politicians can't seem to do but somehow science can what is so important about that is i absolutely i think that's one of the big strong points of these kinds of missions is that it's an opportunity for other countries to come together and work on something in common in the case of cassini as you point out great collaboration between nasa the european space agency and your tie in space agency a wonderful discoveries that talked about so it would be international space station i mean you look at the composition and we've got to america and russia has two major partners we're going to be countries of the european space agency the japanese space agency and also the canadian space agency all coming together to work together on the most i've. seen action project ever and the world's premier

micro-gravity laboratory that's been operating since around one thousand nine hundred seven so it really is an task opportunity for these countries to come together and have at least one common thing the very visible being there were all interested in point in the same direction and i think that actually helps to improve relations between these countries and other areas as well have to agree with you and when you say that about ninety seven this is toward the end of the last millennia we were you know cassini was being launched the international space station was coming together and the one thing about cassini that's so important to me at least is that she kind of threw out all the hard fast rules that we had lived by for centuries about certain things you know what those kind of unmanned missions they're so vital because we figured out you know things about where planets are where they move to you know i could talk for an hour just listening everything that cassini found i mean oddball moons that are shaped like we see it out there is all the rest stuff what is it about these unmanned mission. much like the international

space station what is in that is so white all to sort of the future of human space space travel right i've always lived unmanned probes and human spaceflight is complimentary we need to do both you know the unmanned probes of course much simpler spacecraft you don't have to make them be able to keep humans alive you know that's quite a simplification and you know lowers the cost of things like that so you've sent the unmanned probes traditionally we've sent unmanned probes out first to learn things to figure out characterize the environment and then the human missions follow and so we did that of course in the lower orbit we did that to the moon and we're doing that to mars as well and you know we've got probes on mars and as you say these discoveries are fantastic i mean because seaney i can't think of hardly any other mission right now is discovered as much as it's cassini has i mean just the fact that there's now the possibility it could be some kind of microbial life

deep in the oceans of and so on this is just just fascinating in our own backyard it is and it's there's so many other things i mean like i said you could go on for days and days and it's just looking at all the things she found a lot of the way it was made about how cassini destroyed herself and about the concerns about infecting planets and of course a lot of headlines were reading about aliens what about aliens can you guys talk a little bit about that concern is that as we go into space what's the responsibility of our astronauts our scientists when going out into those worlds and keeping our or our own bio could see from ruining someone else's why is that so important. right what you're referring to is called planetary protection and that's to be clear not worrying about asteroids coming at us and in figuring out how to fight them this war not contaminating your forward towards you know other planets or even not containing and contaminating backwards that is having a pro bring something back to the ridge you know i'm going towards going to movies

about. you know it is a serious matter and actually i currently do serve on a committee with the national academy of sciences where we're looking at those issues and so what we're looking at in this case is we want don't want to do any forward contamination that is cassini was sterilized all the components were carefully sterilized before it was launched into space but on the off chance that it might contain some kind of you know some kind of life from the earth or chemicals from the earth that could be used as building blocks we didn't want that to possibly go and contaminate come in sell it in a sewer titan or other places that you know could have its own leftovers we don't want to get confused and say hey we've got a life that actually came from our own spacecraft number one and number two you kind of brought up the ethical concern you know is there really is there really are a place to contaminate a place i mean that's that's open for debate but the real scientific concern is the first one that we don't want to artificially introduce life and then think that

we've found indigenous life there and so for that reason they had to have you know which is running out of going to do its last maneuver to position it so that it would enter the saturn saturn's atmosphere and burn up from the friction of the great speed that it was travelling. adventure is really to me what propelled cassini and and the sciences over for centuries i mean ever since i was a kid i haven't it is never been a doubt in my mind that at some point i will go into space which is ridiculous i think most people think of as they are people like you go into space and that's but now it doesn't seem as ridiculous to think about the fact that as a kid i looked up at the sky and said i'm going to go up there someday and that adventure is what sort of propelled everybody and made this mission happen that spirit of discovery and exploration do you think we'll be celebrating missions like this twenty years from now do you think that we're cassini is the first and we are because i think a lot of people's concern now with everything going on the world is we're just going to stop doing this and twenty years from now we won't have

a cassini to celebrate what do you think. oh i think we'll continue exploring i mean it's just human nature to be curious to want to explore. a senior forest grant task mission almost unparalleled but but in recent years we've also seen the excuse me the. new horizons mission which gave us so much new information and dazzling photos of pluto we could have european space agency's mission rosetta then we went to comet sixty seven p. and discovered the building blocks of life you know a little lander on on a comment i mean that was science fiction not that long ago so i think we're going to keep doing these things because it's in our nature is humans now you know you know course there are a lot of other things going on in the world but there always has been i think it's human nature to have conflicts you know and unfortunately seems to go unabated but at same time i think you can't stop that and you can't stop the curiosity either so i am hopeful that we will also have the positive side of humanity prevail and

continue with these very fascinating missions such as cassini well i want to thank you so much for sharing this stay with me i am it's always really important and especially watching the hocks wave really this idea of adventure and spirit that propels humankind forward is so important and i want to thank you for the work that you've done at the international space station and in the sciences because if it weren't for people like you we wouldn't be where we are and we wouldn't have a future so i want to thank you so much. for joining us today and celebrating cassini is a twenty year mess and everything she did for us. now thank you very much a pleasure being on your show and i really great conversation thank you thank you so much as we go to break don't forget to let us know what you think of the topics we've covered on facebook and twitter see our full shows at r.t. dot com moving up coming up most who care involve any tops polar icecaps and we can

from the back tonight hope some of the hops mouse for a little q. and a on what there is a laugh about in the new fifty states to watch a movie. called the future we don't know. every the world should experience. it you'll get it out of the old the old. the old according to just. come on there are.

i think the average viewer just after watching a couple of segments understands that we're telling stories there are critics can't tell and you know why because their advertisers won't let them. in order to create change you have to be honest you have to tell the truth parties able to do that and . every story is built on going after the back story to what's really happening out there to the american what's happening when a corporation makes a pharmaceutical chills people when a company in the environmental goodness ends up polluting a river that causes cancer and other illnesses they put all the health risk all the dangers out to the american public those are stories that we tell every week and

you know want their working. no matter ones belief in the topic of climate change to steadily become one of humanity's most pressing debates be it the devastation of hurricane harvey or the impact of droughts and heat waves throughout the nation's southwest the climate potential implications for humanity are concerned like no other for societies policy makers and experts but thousands of miles away from the climate ripples we see in tech six or florida and from the political debates in washington and paris no region demonstrates the issues urgency and relevance more than the mysterious arctic circle surrounding the north pole and accessible to most ordinary tourist the north pole does get a small number of dedicated travelers every year on board

a nuclear powered russian icebreaker and among them scientific writer karen mulvaney who joined us earlier to reflect on his experience. getting back to the polaroid well i want to for those watching at home you know i think it's one thing to address the problem and recognize the problem is that you know what is the solutions to what can we do at least we know anyone who's followed this knows long term solutions to climate change obviously but you know reducing our c o two but what is there any short term changes or short term solutions that we can throw in act. to help hold back this ice melt or is it just something about this boy. well look there's a very real concern specifically with the arctic. that it is in arctic sea ice is in what some experts have called a death spiral that walk happens as the ice melts so more water becomes more water becomes exposed that absorbs heat which makes it much easier to melt the

ice the ice becomes thinner and that's more susceptible to melting and so that feeds in on itself so. under present scenarios it seems as if in the mid to in sort of twenty fifty twenty seventy five something like that we might be left the way we're going with a refugium of ice if you will to the west of greenland in the very north northeast of canada and at the moment that looks like that's a cycle that feeding on itself so one thing that would help frankly would be for the united states to rejoin the paris agreement and try to. meet its commitments under that but even the commitments under the paris agreement probably aren't enough to really put the brakes on the some of the processes that we're seeing so we is it and that's another problem again also why i almost hate saying that because it's another reason why people might not be particularly motivated to care about climate change because if you say well look these big things are happening

and they're really in process is going to be very hard to stop them they think well with them why are you telling me to turn off my lights when i leave a room. we're going to stop anything happening because it seems like such a big problem and such an intractable problem and such an unsolvable problem but really just the sooner that we all do those things that we've talked about reducing your so you have to footprint as much as we can the sooner really that governments act because it doesn't have to be on a very large scale the sooner that business is done the sooner we can get round to actually what we're going to end up having to do is we're first some of the consequences some of them are inevitable to some extent through so do you think what it would that one thing that you mentioned about the fact that you know going back to paris agreement but if you is someone who also who spent a lot of time looking at that science and sort of having it explained and understanding it to how terrifying it really is when you look at it in fifty sixty years. what can we do when these climate agreements when these government packs

when politicians are coming together and they say well hey we're going to do this but it's it doesn't really go far enough back when really what we need is something that's really really robots so how do we get our politicians to get to it and put something that's a little more robust and whole. you know a lot of people are putting their faith in cities and communities. you know there is a an organization in this country mayors against climate change and a number of cities are trying to enact policies energy related policies other related medication policies irrespective of what the federal government does irrespective of what other governments there and that's happening i think to some extent around the world and in some respects that actually fits better the way of trying to address this because if you're able to address it more on a grassroots community or city level then it's something that's a bit more tangible that's

a bit more fungible and it's much quicker you're able to act that much more more swiftly and given the you know the increasing. people live in cities given the vast far lot of the impact is that's actually a pretty good way forward in many respects so. it's almost there are those who have argued actually that the administration choosing to jump to paris agreement actually in the long term one actually proved to be a bad thing because that has motivated a lot of people and has sort of helped light an additional fire under some of these organizers in cities and elsewhere to really step up their game and to decide to push ahead with policies that are linked with each other and with other cities around the world irrespective of what the federal government or irrespective of what other governments they. are also also also more because always always a pleasure to read your work and to have you on the show clearing the way the author and journalist they do so much for coming on and joining us today. thanks very much as always a pleasure to be here. we've been watching coverage of the mainstream media both

hurricanes hardly an arm a but what are we going to do to solve our infrastructure problem and how are we repairing for the next one i have no idea why but we brought a host of redacted i think yeah. that's. i don't. know i'm just getting. at least we're going to read a tyrrel that was important finally finally we're going to talk like human beings. fifteen. rounds of this week so this week in the opening i talk about this insane coverage of the hurricanes which is five never reported there but they're basically talking about like vapid it's just like oh it's windy out here my face is wet you know and this is important stuff of climate change this is freaking important and it's crushing us and it's crushing the poor people for why it's not as important to a lot of people but you know they're the ones that can rebuild after this and so i wanted to redo some of the mainstream media coverage and make it

a little bit better and have a little more few more facts in there rather than just when be out here so here is my version. some of c.n.n.'s coverage of hurricane irma. hurricane harvey was the largest rain event ever did to the continental united states the wildfire in los angeles one week ago was the more you just tell a fires ever recorded and this july died last july for the hottest days but had looked ok because i was wowed worried earlier exotic ever recorded on the planet our planet is turning into a gas journey thanks to five fuels and unfettered capitalism we have to rethink our entire society which ends with me in the media won't even mention the reality of the situation where basically murdering future generations we are almost literally watching our jill dougherty quit your bird and drown in the wrath of climate change

i don't know how any of us sleep at night even if you don't have the prostate problems that i do they keep me up oh god i just wait up baby just let me know he's still a bit baby. then got hit by a human baby that's why but he but no it is in seeing coverage considering what is going down the solutions to these problems are out there the money if you look at our war budget is out there to solve these problems but our politicians are just completely am caused by the money they're getting by will and gas it's insane and developers too i mean you look at hugh said he why was the flooding so bad why has the water receded why is there going to be now is great poison to get rid of mosquitoes that might kill covered all of the land that actually absorbs the water with pavement and then they're like oh i don't understand why does a good girl missing here pro publica put out a year ago saying this is exactly what would happen instead and no one cared

nothing they do well because there's money and what we need houses and we need this and we need that and now this booming city. it's short term greedy it's also we're told we can make this much money from a year from now whereas you look fifty years down the road and the poor people in these communities are devastated people are devastated florida right now in houston and the keys and out in the caribbean and you know rich people can afford to rebuild the house can afford to evacuate but you know when you sort term greedy we are killing the planet in ourselves in order for profit tomorrow why do we do it why do is there not in the one percent why is it always we don't get short we don't get to have those short term gains seems like we don't get to just do something kind of actually get you know one hundred million dollars for something over a year where we're not we're not enjoying the money pits you know like scrooge mcduck or anything and eighty three percent of stock on a wall street is owned by one percent of people so even in those gains on investing

you know as investors invest on the and profit from these disasters none of it's going to filtering down and then in the next segment on the show i talked about you guys might have already talked about i don't know but rand paul's. when we just say hey let's not give our president and the ability to just. or isn't that a lose war and the democrats when. there are thirteen democrats voted to continue on limited war powers for donald f. ing troll this is the god i do want to go but you know i want them for the mess in the next hour the whole point i thought also from conservatives was we don't want to have all this power it's almost as if that was about something you know it's almost as if this resistance is not a real resistance in fact whatever the weapons contractors are cool with oh northrop grumman give me a sack of cash so we'll just keep going with this. yeah it's that it says that when

you just sit there and you you have to listen to these people actually go. not on the memo we we want to have that one it what are you crazy. i mean the the idea that in two thousand and two we passed a bill that said oh yeah the president from you on out can just do anything it wants wars going on in seven countries and just we're never going to reopen it or think about it again that you know they just throw out the amendment to undo this it's congress' job as crappy as they are to decide whether we should go to war or not and they're just shirking that responsibility to donald trump and mad dog mattis mad dog freak and madness i really we would also be having this same conversation if hillary had been elected i was able a gallery as the coeds why did it go down almost as if it's all just a game to keep us really absolutely she was the one that was giggling we came we

saw we died and i've seen is the one that finds it so funny to bomb other countries and loosely and kill innocent civilians so yeah we did we'd be saying the same stuff we were but it's him and where is this resistance nowhere to be found and you'll see more of that whole area if they become going to a bad sense and i think you could funny on the show he had somebody you're funny here everybody at home don't mess redacted tonight which airs every friday on our team erica and redacted tonight v.i.p. which features exclusive interviews and panels every thursday on our team erica and that that's our show for you this week remember everyone take care of each other out there and yourself. and i'm top of the wall and keep on watching us and have a go rate weekend everyone doing.

it's called the feeling of freedom. everyone in the world should experience flamingo and you'll get the old the old. the old according to just. welcome to my world come along for the ride. i'm going to do just that and you're watching our. larry king now probably brothers through. everything in our lives it's very unexpected there was no trajectory that said what we're going to do with even being born there's no altar sound we were.