Neil deGrasse Tyson Warns Us About Our Future, But Nicely

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is the director of the world-famous Hayden Planetarium, a monthly columnist for Natural History, an award-winning author, and a vocal spokesperson in support of the Space Program.  He has begun production of a new Cosmos series, premiering in early 2013.  This week he stopped by the SiriusXM studios to talk about the release of his new book, “Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier.”

Ron Bennington: Do you think that we’ve lost touch, as citizens, of the space program?

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Yeah I think we have, but for reasons that I don’t think are commonly expressed. If you go back to the golden era of space exploration, of course it’s the 1960’s. People forget that every mission from Gemini leading up to Apollo was more ambitious than the previous mission. One mission would go up and try docking in space. And then the first space walking. And then the first deployment of a piece of hardware relating to going to the moon. Then the first trip to the moon. So the public could embrace an ever advancing frontier and recognize that every time you advance a frontier you have to innovate.  And as you do this, NASA ends up becoming…I think to think of it as a kind of fly-wheel of stored innovation that society then tapped. And in the tapping of that, you not only tapped the innovation, but you tapped the attitude and the emotion of what it is to explore. Why was it in the 60s…was anyone complaining about jobs going overseas? I don’t think so. Because at the time we innovating the jobs and they hadn’t figured out how to do them yet. Not only that but the world’s fair, what was that all about? Tomorrow.  There was a sense of tomorrow that pervaded even in the most turbulent decade in American history since the Civil War.  And today we are not advancing a space frontier. And without that we’re losing jobs, no one is thinking about tomorrow they just want to survive the day, our economy is in the toilet. All of these, I claim are related phenomenon.

Ron Bennington: We also had the greatest young minds at the time all going to the same place. Do kids at MIT now still think NASA first?

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Well some are, there will always be some. MIT has an aerospace engineering department as many good schools do. What matters is, not only whether you attract a generation of people to go in to do aerospace type things. Even if you become a poet or a comedian or an actor if that you become a participant in the adventure…so that you vote in ways that support the adventure. So you don’t have these issues where people are trying to change the science curriculum because they don’t like it.  And you don’t have this hostility toward something that an entire generation understood how fundamental it was, not only to advancing the frontier, but to our identity as a nation. Part of who and what we were.

Ron Bennington: Because we did it better than anyone else.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Now a lot of it was reactive to what was going on in Russia but once we embraced it, we took it to the limit. So it was militaristically driven but we benefitted economically. So going forward let’s do the same thing, minus the military part, and we’ll benefit economically. But people aren’t thinking of NASA that way. They’re thinking of it as a kind of a hand out, a kind of a luxury thing you do when you have spare money…as though it’s not fundamental to our economic security or health.

Ron Bennington: Because we need big challenges. And when you have big challenges, you end up solving every small challenge to get there.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Exactly! You end up triggering innovative thinking in a society where that’s how you want people to think . That becomes more than just “how did I solve the space problem.” That’s just innovative thinking in general. It becomes a valued activity within society. I think it’s no accident that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were like 13 and 14 when we landed on the moon. No they didn’t participate in the moon voyage. They wouldn’t even end up in aerospace. But they innovated. We were in an innovation culture when that went on. And that’s the force – I think of NASA almost as a force of nature in that regard.

Ron Bennington: You try to explain to people. Like if you’re a fan of the New York Giants, it’s a football team, and this team that you’re not even a part of– and they win. The whole city celebrates. When that happened the entire country felt like we did it.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: I love your analogy with the New York Giants or any city. Even if you’re not a football fan or a baseball fan, if your hometown city wins, the city feels it. And it influences the mood, the attitude, the culture. And it’s that cultural force that I think people have not embraced or haven’t really thought about. In the book, I try to tease that out of the profile of our history to alert people, that it may be the most important influence that NASA can have upon us.

Ron Bennington: Yes because we were fans. You really don’t need 350 million scientists, but you need the same kind of excitement level that we get about sports.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: That’s correct. And then people make decision in support of those who do. You elect representatives who are champions of those causes. You embrace the technological trappings that come from it. I could give a very impressive list of direct consequences of space investments, I just don’t think that’s the biggest reason to do it. But let me give you just a couple of fast ones. The fact that electronics became miniaturized, was driven by the need for NASA to shave the weight off of hardware and robotic technologies that they were putting into orbit, because every extra ounce you pay dearly in fuel. Because there’s a thing called the rocket equation. I have a whole chapter on propulsion in the book. Why was the Saturn 5 rocket 32 stories tall? And where the astronauts? In this little bitty capsule at the top? The rest was fuel. Why? Because you need fuel to launch the fuel you haven’t burned yet. And you need fuel to launch the fuel you haven’t burned yet, to launch the fuel you’re going to burn later. And every ounce reveals itself in this fuel train that you have to carry with you. So the miniaturization of electronics, which then became self driven because people realized, hey I like the fact that this furniture that we used to call a radio can now fit on my belt or a lapel clip– we take all that for granted. And of course, all space technology is satellites. You know whether it’s going to rain on your head or not because of a satellite image brought to you by The Weather Channel who owes its very existence and maps to what space technology has brought you. Other things that NASA has discovered– scratch resistant lenses, tempur foam mattresses, a grooved pavement to give you traction. That’s a low tech solution, you don’t want the shuttle to skid off the runway.

Ron Bennington: Sure.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: These are the kinds of innovations, some simple some complex, that transform how you live. If I took all that technology [that came from the space program] out of your room in the dark of night, you’d wake up technologically impoverished.

Ron Bennington: And then all of that R&D that we do is then available to American entrepreneurs. And American entrepreneur can go, okay what they’re doing in space we can do in camping, we can do in scuba gear, what ever it happens to be.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: And not to mention GPS. Not specifically a NASA project but it’s space based. And I love what you said about it being available to others. Cordless power tools– who here can even remember a time before cordless power tools– they’re so fundamental to the handyman and any person on a construction site has a cordless power tool. They were invented by NASA because you can’t plug in your drill set on orbit. There’s no plug waiting for you. And it goes on and on.

Ron Bennington: And any problems that we have, whether its overpopulation or the food or with the environmental, we’re going to need technology to get us out of it. Cause we’re not going to be moving backwards.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: We are in an era, a century, a millennium, where solutions to problems are going to be technologically and scientifically driven. You are absolutely right. And we’ve known this since the dawn of the industrial revolution– what role science and technology has played in solving problems that relate to the environment. It can create problems too, but you solve them. So now the air is cleaner, the water is cleaner than ever before. Oh, and also the pour through water filter– that was a NASA development as well. Because you want to purify water, on orbit. You can’t go to a spigot that connects to a reservoir when you’re in orbit. Things you take for granted every day.

Ron Bennington: The other thing too, to get people behind this, and get the excitement up, we need to put men up there.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: That’s an interesting question and a point. Many of my colleagues, astro-physicists….some of them, I’d say the minority at this point, still feel that you should never send humans up. Because robots will do the same job. Sure if you’re only going to do science; if that’s your only objective, sure just send up robots. But that was never why NASA was created. NASA wasn’t created to do science. In fact the science budget of NASA peaked at 40% a few years ago but the long-term average is around 25%. So the lion’s share of the NASA budget has always been the manned program, in the service of geo-political needs. Whatever is the needs of the nation to conduct that is the role NASA has played. And I don’t have a problem with that. In the future, maybe NASA will pave the way for tourism, or mining the moon. Any of these possibilities can come as a result of this. But to say, let’s stick to Earth and ignore the rest of the universe because it doesn’t affect us…this is delusional thinking that would be the end of our nation, and possibly, given the likelihood of an asteroid strike, the end of our species.

Ron Bennington: That comes up, where there’s this possible asteroid strike within a few years…and of course we have no way of dealing with that.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: I don’t want to be the laughing-stock of the aliens in the galaxy if they find out that we went extinct from an asteroid that we had the power to deflect, but didn’t fully fund the space program to enable it. So the dinosaurs– you know if they had a space program, they would have been all over that asteroid. Then they’d still be here and we’d be running under foot, so I’m glad they didn’t have a space program.

Ron Bennington: Do you feel in your gut– cause we have no proof yet– but do you feel there’s something out there?

Neil deGrasse Tyson: If you look at how old the universe is, and how prevalent the ingredients of life are everywhere we look, and how quickly life began on Earth given the opportunity to do so. A couple hundred million years, which is short given the age of the earth. Then to deny the possibility of life elsewhere in the galaxy would be inexcusably egocentric. If you feel strongly that there’s no life– you part the curtains, typically there is some other philosophy you’re bringing to bear; religious philosophy were you choose not to accept the data that strongly tells us that life is likely– not simply possible.

Ron Bennington: And that kind of thinking has been a roadblock for science?

Neil deGrasse Tyson: It hasn’t been a bad roadblock. For most of American history, there’s been science and nay-sayers to science. There’s been a line in the sand where the power of the nay-sayers hasn’t risen. Lately it has risen. And so, I don’t know what the future of those roadblocks are. All I can say is, if they succeed…. We’re a free country, so you can vote whoever you want into office. I’m not here to tell you who to vote for. But I will tell you the consequences of certain decisions that may be a part of the platform of who you do vote for. If you’re voting for someone who resists the progress of science– who sees science as an enemy of a philosophy that they carry– okay then you start squashing science in our culture. That’s the end of our economic security going forward. We’re already ebbing. That will just send it into reverse. And then everything you’ve ever valued about the wealth of this nation will evaporate, practically overnight. That is the consequence of it. If that’s how you want to vote, just be aware that that’s what is going to happen. I’ll be on the next boat to the country that values science and engineering, and so will every other scientist and engineer. And the United States will recede back to the cave.

Ron Bennington: Well we teach our kids this is the greatest country in the world– this is a God given right you have. But the fact of the matter is, we had to work our asses off…

Neil deGrasse Tyson: …we worked our BUTTS OFF! A prior generation– sacrifices– time, energy, money, their lives– to achieve that status to even be able to utter that sentence. And the people who want to be able to utter that sentence today…they’ve been cruising on the leftovers of a previous generation and the pantry is running dry.

Ron Bennington: And a lot of that had to do with World War II.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Yes it did, yes it did. A lot of it is militaristically driven. But while war is the number one driver of motivated expenditure of money and capital and resources, a close second is the urge to gain wealth. So I claim, if you don’t like exploring and you don’t like Saturn the way I do, I’m not going to twist your arm, but I’m pretty sure you don’t want to end up poor. So I’m trying to make the case in the book, that NASA is your greatest infusion of economic innovation and security that you’ll ever come up with. So a healthy NASA becomes an investment in the total wealth of the nation. And what is it now, a half a penny on the dollar? So I say double it to a penny. We’d be good to go. That’s all I’m asking for.

Ron Bennington: I appreciate you being in here, and I think the thing that people can pick up from you is that you can stay awake. You can live a life of not just surviving but you can keep the future close to you. Thank you so much. And we’ll see you next time through.

=========================================

You can hear this interview in its entirety exclusively on SiriusXM satellite radio.  Not yet a subscriber?  Sign up for a free trial subscription here.

Follow Neil deGrasse Tyson on twitter @neiltyson and check out his new book Space Chronicles:  Facing the Ultimate Frontier on Amazon and in bookstores everywhere.


***