It took enormous resources and people willing to work long hours and take some big risks. The Moon landings were a result of the Cold War. It became a competition to see who could build the biggest number of history’s deadliest rockets. Along with that was a push to gain the ultimate high ground – space. The Moon became the highest of the high. The United States mobilized a tremendous corps of workers, built big rockets, and got it done. The Soviet Union went out of business about twenty years later. But despite the politics, it was the most exciting thing ever.

For many days after the successful landing and return of the Apollo 11 crew, everyone on Earth shared that spirit of excitement. After twelve people landed on the Moon and returned safely to Earth, interest in expensive journeys to visit the “magnificent desolation” of the Moon waned. Instead, we have sent well over 100 spacecraft there to learn more of the Moon’s makeup and its past, which you have to figure, is our planet’s past as well.

Spaceflight around the Earth, in what’s called “Low Earth Orbit” (LEO) has become routine. More than 500 people have flown in space. We at the Planetary Society (planetary.org) are hoping humankind sets out on new space journeys to new hardly-known places in space. There are asteroids headed our way. There is a great deal to be learned from the climate of Venus. And, who knows? Life on Earth may have gotten started on Mars. Wouldn’t it be something to go there and have a look around?

So, take a moment this week and reflect on how far we’ve come as a species and how much we don’t know about our planetary home. Our relationship to our Earth, our Moon, and our neighboring planets helps us understand how very special the Earth is. The people who helped humankind land on the Moon 41 years ago were explorers. Their adventures and the discoveries they made changed the world for all of us. This week, let’s celebrate our place in space.

One day, as a very young man, around age seven, my older brother Darby patiently wound the rubber band “motor” on a newly purchased Skystreak balsawood airplane, and handed the aircraft to me.

Having flown various glider airplanes for weeks that summer, we had chanced on the idea of bending the vertical tail to provide a little steering– some yaw control.

I carefully held the plane up near my right ear, one hand on the balsa stick that serves as the fuselage, and one hand securing the propeller. I let fly. The little Skystreak flew like none of us had ever seen. It climbed, while making three graceful circles in the sky. It descended and returned to me as if it were a storybook boomerang– right to my hand. I had produced controlled flight. I was hooked.  I wanted to be an engineer.

Long about that same time, my father set up a musty telescope, given to him by his old scoutmaster. I saw craters on the Moon. My dad, by the way, had spent almost four years as a prisoner of war in Asia. He had seen spectacular dark skies. He knew his way around the heavens. So some days later, we saw the rings of Saturn.

Now, many of us have had similar experiences with stargazing, microscope gazing, or watching a dandelion’s life cycle. But through what I consider remarkable luck, I ended up in Professor Carl Sagan’s astronomy class. He showed us subtle mathematical features of the sky that I had only suspected but never known. He emphasized critical thinking and the scientific method– reasoning.

Carl Sagan wrote the novel Contact that became the movie Contact. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his book Dragons of Eden.

Along the way, concerned about NASA’s flagging interest in space exploration with the public’s interest as strong as ever, Professor Sagan, Dr. Bruce Murray, and Dr. Lou Friedman set up the Planetary Society. It became the world’s largest non-governmental space interest organization.

Well now, my friends, after 30 years on the job, Lou is retiring, and I am to become the Planetary Society’s Executive Director.

What an opportunity, a chance to change the world! We are at another turning point in the history of space exploration. The United States’ Space Shuttle program is finally winding down. Over 100 spacecraft have visited the Moon. Dozens of other space missions from space agencies around the world have proven that Mars was once a very wet place. It’s time to look there for signs of liquid water and evidence of ancient or even extant life. By looking back into the fossil record of deep time, we have a new awareness of how much trouble a speeding space rock could cause. It’s another moment in history, where we must learn more about our place in space. It’s another opportunity for ordinary people to share in the exploration of a new frontier, to go beyond the unknown horizon. What a ride!

Since I launched my first model rockets, I’ve loved space exploration. I hope you’ll take a few moments and learn about the Planetary Society. It’s quite a group.

Meanwhile, I will keep on posting my commentaries on science, technology, education, and especially climate change. We’ll see if we can change the world.

Thanks for your support,

Bill Nye

Check out http://Planetary.org

I’m in the picture along with the board of the Planetary Society. We’re working to change the world. I hope you are too…

]]> http://www.billnye.com/in-honor-of-stephen-hawking/feed/ 1 http://www.billnye.com/plutonium-in-space/ http://www.billnye.com/plutonium-in-space/#comments Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:31:37 +0000 Bill Nye http://www.billnye.com/newsite/?p=155 Read More > ]]> About fifteen years ago, I had the honor and pleasure of having lunch with Glenn Seaborg. Unlike many of us, he was awarded a Nobel Prize. He discovered, or created, or contrived the means to prepare the very first piece of Plutonium humans had ever seen. He was of the Nuclear Age, a time when it was imagined that nuclear power would render electricity too cheap to even bother charging customers for.

Plutonium is not only fantastically dangerous on account of it being radioactive, but it’s also remarkably toxic. Glenn Seaborg told me that inhaling a milligram would kill a person in seconds – this over lunch. Glenn (by this point in the lunch, I called him Glenn), also told us that “they” (his colleagues) wanted him to call it Plutinum [PLOO-tih-Numm]. Then he said, but, let’s face it Bill (calling me Bill, very fine with me), Plutonium [Ploo-TOE-Nee-umm] sounds a lot cooler [KOO-ler]. He emphasized that he insisted, back in the day, that this newly discovered metal’s atomic symbol be Pu, [pee-Yew]. He wanted, he said, to emphasize that Plutonium “stinks.”

You make it by transmuting Uranium two-thirty-eight (238), which has 92 protons and 146 neutrons into Plutonium 238, which has 94 protons and 144 neutrons – simple enough(?!). At any rate, after you use a nuclear reactor, maybe with some Neptunium and just the right geometry, your Plutonium is strikingly energetic. That’s why the U.S. Department of Energy finds the bombs made with Plutonium so, well, energetic, as well.

This would be just another astonishing example of a few humans, through astonishing diligence, discovering another astonishing secret of the Universe. But for all of us, there’s even a little more to it.

Plutonium is what we use to know our place in the Universe. Plutonium is not only good for bombs; it’s what we use to make electricity on spacecraft. These electrical gizmos (gizmoes?) use the heat produced by radioactive compacted Plutonium to drive electrons from one piece of metal to another not-quite-the-same (dissimilar) metal. And, these radioactively heated coupled metals make electricity- for 30 years running. We call them Radio-Thermometric Generators (RTG’s).

The U.S. Government, Congress, the President, et al have decided that Plutonium is so stinky that we don’t need any of it anymore. Owing to its inherent dangerous quality, that might seem like a good idea. But, we in the United States, our Earth’s leader in interplanetary exploration, will no longer be able to explore a planet beyond Mars. See, the thing-of-it is that there is not enough sunlight out there. Out where Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and the Plutoids are, sunlight is so spread out that we cannot power our electronics. Oh, you can hope for some kooky and fabulous new innovations to make distant space ships continue to sail. But really people, the problem is too hard, much too hard. We need some, a very small amount indeed, of Plutonium.

So, maybe next time around voters and taxpayers can help their representatives see the light, or the heat, of Plutonium – just a little.

For now though, we’re going to have to count on our telescopes and the dozen or so spacecraft that still carry RTG’s. This would include the next Mars rover, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) that, unlike the Spirit & Opportunity rovers will be able to work hard all winter there. New Horizons, the Pluto mission would be dark and cold as well as being out in the dark and cold. And Jupiter? Saturn? Without their RTG’s we would have no shadows on rings. We would know nothing of storms in a gas giant. The fuel of an RTG is dangerous, but these craft let us make amazing discoveries and help us address the two questions that drive us all. Where did we come from, and are we alone??

Here’s hoping, in the next few years, we decide to spend $30 million it would take to keep the outer planets within reach.

Copyright Bill Nye

Solar Sails

Among other things, I’m the vice president of a worldwide, medium-sized organization called The Planetary Society. We are launching a series of spacecraft that will be driven through space, not by rocket fuel, but by the pressure of sunlight.

It is surprising at first, at least for most everyone I’ve ever met, that light has momentum. Light has no mass, y’know. Yet it can ever-so-slightly push things.

You probably know or accept that E = mc². This is to say that if you could convert all the mass in a bit of matter, say the hydrogen in a glowing star, into pure energy, you’d get an enormous amount of it. A kilogram of mass times 300,000 kilometers per second (186,000 miles per hour, as was said back in the 20th Century) is an enormous number of sustained Watts (Watt-seconds or Joules, okay, or foot-pounds).

Well, if you mess around with this equation and insert the idea that moving energy kinetic energy would carry with it a mass and a speed-squared, you can convince yourself that light has momentum. The theoretical limit being established by a physical measurement called Plank’s Constant.

So, we at the Planetary Society are building three very, very low mass sails, solar sails spacecraft. Our solar sail will be pushed through space by the momentum inherent in photons, particles of light, in this case those beaming from our Sun. A photon carries a quantum of energy, the smallest packet of energy we can measure. But with quadrillions of them impacting the sail at every moment, we’ll get a tiny shove. Since the light beams continuously, we hope to build up speed. By the time we build the third sail we hope to have gotten a nice orbit going.

It’s going to be fantastic the first new propulsion system since, well, since the Greek mathematician Heron built his steam jet reaction spinner engine.

We can sail by starlight. How cool is that?