Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier

by Neil Degrasse Tyson; Avis Lang

  • • • CHAPTER SIX

  DESTINED FOR THE STARS*

  Video interview with Calvin Sims for The New York Times

  The Conversation

  Neil deGrasse Tyson: We need to go back to the Moon. Many people say, “We’ve been there, done that, can’t you come up with a new place to visit?” But the Moon offers important technological advantages. A trip to Mars takes about nine months. If you haven’t been out of low Earth orbit for forty years, sending people to Mars for the first time is a long way to go and a hard thing to do. A big thrust of the new space vision is to reengage the manned program in ways that haven’t been done during the past decade, and to recapture the excitement that drove so much of the space program back in the 1960s.

  Calvin Sims: So the reasons to go are to prove that we can do it again, because we haven’t done it in such a long time, and also to build consensus for it?

  NDT: We haven’t left low Earth orbit recently. We have to remind ourselves how to do that—how to do it well, how to do it efficiently. We also have to figure out how to set up base camp and sustain life in a place other than Earth or low Earth orbit. The Moon is a relatively easy place to get to and test all this out.

  CS: NASA has estimated it could cost $100 billion, conservatively, to go to the Moon. Do you think it’s prudent to be funding this effort, especially at a point in our history when we have a war in Iraq and a lot of domestic demands?

  NDT: This $100 billion figure needs to be unpacked. It doesn’t come all at once; it’s spread over multiple years. And $100 billion, by the way, is only six years of total NASA funding.

  America is a wealthy nation. Let’s ask the question, “What is going to space worth to you?” How much of your tax dollar are you willing to spend for the journey that NASA represents in our heart, in our minds, in our souls? NASA’s budget comes to one-half of one percent of your tax bill. So I don’t think that’s the first place people should be looking if they want to save money in the federal budget. It’s certainly worth a whole percent—personally, I think it’s worth more than that—but if all you’re going to give us is one percent, we can make good use of it.

  Destined for the Stars

  NDT: In every culture across time, there has always been somebody wondering about our place in the universe and trying to come to terms with what Earth is. This is not a latter-day interest; it’s something deeply inherent in what it is to be human. As twenty-first-century Americans, we’re lucky to be able to act on that wonder. Most people just stood there, looked upward, and invented mythologies to explain what they were wondering about. We actually get to build spaceships and go places. That’s a privilege brought by the success of our economy and the vision of our leaders, combined with the urge to do it in the first place.

  CS: You’re saying the primary reason to venture into space is the quest for knowledge, and that humans are programmed by nature to satisfy our curiosity and to engage in the sheer thrill of discovery. Why is the allure so great that we risk human lives to get there?

  NDT: Not everyone would risk their life. But for some members of our species, discovery is fundamental to their character and identity. And those among us who feel that way then carry the nation, the world, into the future.

  Robots are important also. If I don my pure-scientist hat, I would say just send robots; I’ll stay down here and get the data. But nobody’s ever given a parade for a robot. Nobody’s ever named a high school after a robot. So when I don my public-educator hat, I have to recognize the elements of exploration that excite people. It’s not only the discoveries and the beautiful photos that come down from the heavens; it’s the vicarious participation in discovery itself.

  CS: How far are we from having mass space exploration and experience by the individual person—the colonization of space? This has been a dream for a long time. Is it twenty years off? Thirty years?

  NDT: Anytime I read about the history of human behavior, I see that people are always finding some reason to fight and kill one another. This is really depressing. And so I don’t know that I trust human beings to colonize another planet, and to keep those colonies from becoming zones of violence and conflict. Also, the future has been a little oversold. Just look at what people said in the 1960s: “By 1985 there will be thousands of people living and working in space.” No. It’s now 2006, and we’ve got three people living and working in space. Delusions come about because people lose track of the forces that got us into space in the first place.

  CS: Do you have any desire yourself to venture out and explore space?

  NDT: No, never. Part of the popular definition of the word “space” is, for example, to go into Earth orbit. Well, Earth orbit can be as low as two hundred miles above Earth’s surface. That’s the distance from New York to Boston. My interest in space goes vastly beyond that—to galaxies, black holes, the Big Bang. Now, if we had ways to travel that far, sure, sign me up. Visit the Andromeda galaxy? I’m ready to leave tomorrow. But we don’t have a way to do that yet, so I’ll sit back and wait for it to come.

  The Sun Revolves Around the Earth?

  CS: Americans on average know far less about science and technology than their foreign counterparts. You’ve said that unless we take steps to improve scientific literacy in America, we are headed for a crisis.

  NDT: The crisis is happening already. But I’m pleased to report that people with understanding and foresight are in our midst, some of whom have served on committees that produce documents. “A Nation at Risk,” the 1983 report by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, for example, commented that if an enemy power tried to impose on America the substandard educational system that exists today, we might have considered it an act of war. In fact, the report went so far as to say that America had essentially been “committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.”

  CS: Some studies have shown that only about 20 to 25 percent of the adult population can be considered scientifically literate. And one study found that one American adult in five thinks that the Sun revolves around the Earth, a notion that was abandoned in the sixteenth century. Does that surprise you?

  NDT: Didn’t you just ask me whether we’re in a crisis? Yes, we are. And yes, it concerns me deeply. There’s fundamental knowledge about the physical world that the general public is oblivious to. And by the way, science literacy is not simply how many chemical formulas you can recite, nor whether you know how your microwave oven works. Science literacy is being plugged into the forces that power the universe. There is no excuse for thinking that the Sun, which is a million times the size of Earth, orbits Earth.

  CS: This is particularly troubling because so much political debate has a basis in science: global warming, stem cell research. What do we do about this?

  NDT: I can only tell you what I do about it. I hate to say this, but I’ve given up on adults. They’ve formed their ways; they’re the product of whatever happened in their lives; I can’t do anything for them. But I can have some influence on people who are still in school. That’s where I, as a scientist and an educator, can do something to help teach them how to think, how to evaluate a claim, how to judge what one person says versus what another says, how to establish a level of skepticism. Skepticism is healthy. It’s not a bad thing; it’s a good thing. So I’m working on the next generation as they come up. I don’t know what to do with the rest. That 80 percent of the adults, I can’t help you there.

  CS: How do we change the way science is taught?

  NDT: Ask anybody how many teachers truly made a difference in their life, and you never come up with more than the fingers on one hand. You remember their names, you remember what they did, you remember how they moved in front of the classroom. You know why you remember them? Because they were passionate about the subject. You remember them because they lit a flame within you. They got you excited about a subject you didn’t previously care about, because they were excited about it themselves. That’s what turns peopl
e on to careers in science and engineering and mathematics. That’s what we need to promote. Put that in every classroom, and it will change the world.

  China: The New Sputnik

  NDT: It’s sad but true that one of the biggest drivers fueling the space program in the 1960s was the Cold War. We don’t remember it that way; instead we remember it as, “We’re Americans, and we’re explorers.” What actually happened was that Sputnik lit a flame under our buns, and we said, “This is not good. The Soviet Union is our enemy, and we have to beat them.”

  CS: Now China is the competitor. So would you say America’s ambitious new space initiative is being driven by economic and military goals, especially since China put a man into orbit in 2003 and is close to reaching the Moon?

  NDT: There’s a proximity in time between the launch of the first Chinese taikonaut into orbit, which was October 2003, and a spate of US documents articulating a “space vision,” including the Bush administration’s Vision for Space Exploration in January 2004 and an executive order that same month establishing the Presidential Commission on Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy, followed by NASA’s Vision for Space Exploration in February. The space vision does not state, “We’re worried about the Chinese; let’s get our people back into orbit,” but it would be imprudent not to reflect on the political climate in which these documents were issued. I have no doubt that we’re worried about our ability to compete. Let’s not forget that the vision was announced within a year of the loss of the Columbia space shuttle. It was in the wake of that loss that people started asking questions: What is NASA doing with its manned program? Why are we risking our lives to just drive around the block, boldly going where hundreds have gone before? If you’re going to put your life at risk, let it be because you’re going somewhere no one has ever been. It’s not about being risk averse: you want the risk to be matched to the goal.

  CS: How far advanced are the Chinese? Can we beat them back to the Moon?

  NDT: Of the many comparative statistics between America and other nations, one of my favorites is that there are more scientifically literate people in China than there are college graduates here in America. When I was on the president’s aerospace commission, we went around the world to study the economic climate that our own aerospace industry was now competing in. One of those trips was to China. We met with government officials and industry leaders in 2002—by the way, they all had rings from engineering schools in America—and they told us, “We’re going to put a man in space in a few years.” There was no doubt in our minds that this would happen, because we saw the channeling of their resources into this effort. We saw how they valued it for national pride. We saw how they valued it as an economic engine. What’s fresh for them is what too many Americans have taken for granted within our own nation.

  CS: Is the militarization of space or the colonization of space by different countries inevitable as a consequence of our getting there?

  NDT: We’ve got lots of space assets: communications satellites, weather satellites, GPS. There’s talk of protecting those. Is that the militarization of space that people refer to? Maybe instead they’re referring to lasers and bombs. If that were the trend, it would not be good. Militarization would contaminate the purity of the vision. The vision is to explore. There’s nothing purer in the human spirit than that.

  Losing Our Scientific Edge

  CS: The United States remains the dominant scientific and technological power in the world, but foreign competitors are gaining ground, are they not?

  NDT: It’s not that we’re losing our edge; it’s that everyone’s catching up with us. The United States maintained our investments on technological frontiers in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. We could have stayed ahead of the world, as we were during those decades. Yes, everyone caught up with us and leveled the playing field—but it didn’t have to stay that way. And it doesn’t have to stay that way now. Time for us to reinvest in ourselves. Our nation has the largest economy in the world; it’s not out of our reach to reclaim the leadership we once had.

  CS: But fewer and fewer students are majoring in science and engineering, and, in fact, a substantial portion of our scientific and technological workforce is foreign-born. Isn’t this a concern?

  NDT: I’m not concerned, per se, that foreign students fill a substantial part of our educational pipeline in science and engineering. It’s been that way for several decades. America loses only if those students go home.

  CS: Is that happening?

  NDT: Yes, it is. Before, foreign students would come and stay, and so our investments in them as students produced a return in their creativity and innovation as workers. They became part of the American economy.

  CS: So why are they going back home now?

  NDT: Because the rest of the world is catching up, and now there are opportunities back in their native countries—opportunities that vastly exceed what’s available here.

  CS: Isn’t the increase, the infusion, of scientific capability good for science? Isn’t that what you want to happen?

  NDT: It depends what day you catch me and which hat I’m wearing. It’s easy to speak in terms of wanting to keep America strong, healthy, and wealthy. But as a scientist, you really only care about the frontier of science, wherever that frontier arises. Yes, you want to be on that frontier yourself, but science has always been international. In some ways science transcends nationality, because all scientists speak the same language. The equations are the same, no matter what side of the ocean you’re on or when you’ve written them. So ultimately, yes, it’s good that more people are doing science and that more countries embrace investments in science. Nevertheless, I’ll lament the day Americans become bystanders rather than leaders on the space frontier.

  • • • CHAPTER SEVEN

  WHY EXPLORE*

  Unlike other animals, humans are quite comfortable sleeping on our backs. This simple fact affords us a view of the boundless night sky as we fall asleep, allowing us to dream about our place in the cosmos and to wonder what lies undiscovered in the worlds beyond. Or perhaps a gene operates within us that demands we learn for ourselves what awaits us on the other side of the valley, over the seas, or across the vacuum of space. Regardless of the cause, the effect is to leave us restless for want of a plan to discover. We know in our minds, but especially in our hearts, the value to our culture of new voyages and the new vistas they provide. Because without them, our culture stalls and our species withers. And we might as well go to sleep facing down.

  • • • CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE ANATOMY OF WONDER*

  These days we wonder about many things. We wonder whether we will arrive at work on time. We wonder whether the recipe for corn muffins we got off the Internet will turn out okay. We wonder whether we will run out of fuel before reaching the next gas station. As an intransitive verb, wonder is just another word in a sentence. But as a noun (with the exception of “Boy Wonder,” the moniker for Batman’s sidekick), the word expresses one of our highest capacities for human emotion.

  Most of us have felt wonder at one time or another. We come upon a place or thing or idea that defies explanation. We behold a level of beauty and majesty that leaves us without words; awe draws us into a state of silent stupor. What’s remarkable is not that humans are endowed with this capacity to feel, but that very different forces can stimulate these same emotions within us all.

  The reverent musings of a scientist at the boundary of what is known and unknown in the universe—on the brink of cosmic discovery—greatly resembles the thoughts expressed by a person steeped in religious reverence. And (as is surely the goal of most artists) some creative works leave the viewer without words—only feelings that hover at the limits of the emotional spectrum. The encounter is largely spiritual and cannot be absorbed all at once; it requires persistent reflection on its meaning and on our relationship to it.

  Each component of this trinity of human endeavor—science, religio
n, and art—lays powerful claim to our feelings of wonder, which derive from an embrace of the mysterious. Where mystery is absent, there can be no wonder.

  Viewing a great work of engineering or architecture can force one to pause out of respect for the sublime intersection of science and art. Projects of such a scale have the power to transform the human landscape, announcing loudly, both to ourselves and to the universe, that we have mastered the forces of nature that formerly bound us to an itinerant life in search of food, shelter, and nothing else.

  Inevitably, new wonders supplant old wonders, induced by modern mysteries instead of old. We must ensure that this forever remains true, lest our culture stagnate through time and space. Two thousand years ago, long before we understood how and why the planets moved the way they do in the night sky, the Alexandrian mathematician and astronomer Claudius Ptolemy could not restrain his reverence as he contemplated them. In the Almagest he writes: “When I trace, at my pleasure, the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies, I no longer touch Earth with my feet. I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia.”

  People no longer wax poetic about the orbital paths of planets. Isaac Newton solved that mystery in the seventeenth century with his universal law of gravitation. That Newton’s law is now taught in high school physics classes stands as a simple reminder that on the ever-advancing frontier of discovery, on Earth and in the heavens, the wonders of nature and of human creativity know no bounds, forcing us periodically to reassess what to call the most wondrous.