Return to Venus with David Grinspoon
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Chuck, we're going back to Venus. Haven't been there in like 50 years.
You know what? I haven't been at all and don't ever want to go.
Coming up, what's on the docket for NASA and the search for life in the solar system with the one and only Dr. Funky Spoon on StarTalk. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide.
What are the key objectives of NASA's return to Venus?
StarTalk begins right now. This is Star Talk. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. And right to my right, Chuck Nice. What's up, Neil? All right. Yeah, man. So, one of my favorite subjects today is going to be astrobiology. Ooh. But not only that, we're going to take some extra twists on it because we're bringing in the one, the only, drumroll please. Brrrr. Dr. Funky Spoon! Dr. Funky Spoon! Oh, David Grinspoon. David Grinspoon, welcome back to StarTalk. This is your, like, 20th time on StarTalk?
Something like that. Hey, yeah, it's great to see you guys, as always. Great to be here.
Yeah, yeah. Let me get your resume updated here. A professor at Georgetown University. You're based in Washington, D.C. area. You're on the board of the Scientific Society for Astrobiology. That's a new one for me. Advisory Board of the SETI Institute. They can't do much better than you on that one. And on the science team of NASA's upcoming Da Vinci Mission to Venus. Now you wrote a book on Venus, but was it the book on Venus?
Well, I like to think it was.
That was a few years back. What was the title of that book?
Venus Revealed.
Yeah. Okay. Sounds very sexy.
I know it does. Sounds very, very sexy. I wrote it right after the last U.S. mission to Venus, which is, you know, embarrassingly long ago. Except it's amazing that, you know, since the 1980s, we have not had a U.S. mission to Venus. But we're trying to change that now. So maybe I'll have to write another one.
So more fully in this episode, we want to probe your thinking of late and the history of space futures. Oh. That's an interesting thing. It's your children, Marty! Your children! You know, in that scene, why were they rushing if they have a time machine? Yeah. Hurry up!
We've got to get to a point in time that's already passed.
It seems like time would be the one thing you wouldn't have to worry about. Exactly.
That's a pretty good observation. So this history of space futures, That seems like it's intimately intertwined with politics, with culture, with funding, with dream states, even with movies that might try to shape our visions. As, for example, 2001 A Space Odyssey. Right. That got everybody ready for the future that actually never came. Exactly.
That was the one that really, you know, when I was a kid, it was 2001. That was the future that was going to come to pass. I'm still waiting for it.
If one future from 2001 Space Odyssey has come to pass, then that's artificial intelligence. Because that was Hal. He was, you know, an AI. And Hal was homicidal. And so were the ones from Google. I'm sorry. Are they a sponsor?
I take that back. They're great. So how long have you been at Georgetown?
Well, I've taught there before, and then I was sort of adjunct, but not really active because I was doing other things and I was at NASA. But I'm returning there to teach, just starting this upcoming spring semester.
And that's the title of your course, right?
How has our understanding of Venus evolved over the years?
Yeah, yeah, well, I think it's Justifying Space, and then the subtitle is, you know, A History of Space Futures. Okay. But it's a fun lens to look at the history and the present of space exploration, because it's not quite just asking, what happened? It's what were people thinking? What was the motivating vision? What future did they think they were creating? So, you know, you can go all the way back to H.G. Wells and Jules Verne and those kinds of images and then up to, you know, Wernher von Braun and, you know, Robert Goddard and, you know, sort of start of rocketry and Apollo and, you know, all these, like, inspiring visionaries like Carl Sagan, you know, what kind of future were they helping people imagine was going to come to pass through space exploration.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:25
2
What are the key objectives of NASA's return to Venus?
0:25–3:55
3
How has our understanding of Venus evolved over the years?
3:55–8:12
4
What challenges do scientists face in studying Venus's atmosphere?
8:12–10:24
5
What insights do we have about potential life in the clouds of Venus?
10:24–12:12
6
How does the search for extraterrestrial life influence space exploration?
12:12–13:34
7
What are the implications of recent findings from asteroid Bennu?
13:34–14:23
8
How do cultural perceptions shape our understanding of space?
14:23–51:26