Les Johnson has spent his life working with NASA to realize advanced propulsion concepts that could one day enable interstellar voyages.
Guest | Les Johnson, Chief Technologist NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (retired) [@NASA_Marshall]
On Twitter | https://x.com/LesAuthor
On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesjohnson1/
On Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/les.johnson2
On YouTube | http://www.youtube.com/@interstellarresearchgroup
Website | https://www.lesjohnsonauthor.com/
Host | Matthew S Williams
On ITSPmagazine 👉 https://itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/matthew-s-williams
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Episode Notes
Les Johnson has spent his life working with NASA to realize advanced propulsion concepts that could one day enable interstellar voyages. In a new volume, the Interstellar Travel Monograph, he and a select group of experts explore all of the challenges such a voyage would present, before, during, and upon arrival.
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Resources
Interstellar Travel Monograph: https://shop.elsevier.com/books/interstellar-travel/johnson/978-0-323-91637-0
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For more podcast Stories from Space with Matthew S Williams, visit: https://itspmagazine.com/stories-from-space-podcast
Interstellar Travel | A Conversation with Les Johnson | Stories From Space Podcast With Matthew S Williams
[00:00:00] The authors acknowledged that this podcast was recorded on the
traditional unseated lands of the Laan peoples. Hello and welcome back to
Stories From Space. I'm your host, Matt Williams, and today we have a very
special guest, a physicist, author, and NASA technologist, Les Johnson. He is,
in addition to other things, an elected member of the International Academy of
Astronautics.
A fellow of the British Interplanetary Society and a member of the Science
Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He's also the co-founder of the Interest
Dollar Research Group, and as I understand until recently, the chief technologist
at the NASA George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, where you held that
position for many years.
Well, I had the position for about two years. I've been at NASA for 35 years. As
hard as it is for me to believe. Yes. And also you served as the manager for the
Space Science Programs and Projects [00:01:00] Office, the In Space
Propulsion Technology Project and the Interstellar Propulsion Research Project.
So, naturally, um, the subject we'll be discussing will be the agriculture.
Yes. Obviously, we're gonna be getting into Interstellar Travel. And in fact, the,
the many, many things that you've written about it over the years. So first off, so
Les, thank you for joining us today and well, this is a big treat and I hope my
listeners are equally excited because of course, well, your name is synonymous
in many, many circles.
It's synonymous with what, hopefully not the wanted list. Uh, no, but, uh, in
terms of yes, not only interstellar exploration and space exploration, but the
advocacy thereof. And, uh, the listeners are not gonna be able to sing this, but I
was able to fish out two books that ah, that you yourself are author or co-author
[00:02:00] of.
The first is going Interstellar. Build Starships now and the Ross 2 4 8 project. I
also have a copy of living Off the Land in Space by you and Greg Mat. That's
correct. Unfortunately. Yes, I was scaring my bookshelves, but I couldn't find it.
But, uh, I probably moved it during the big hustle. In any case. Uh, this second
volume here, the Ross 2 4 8 project that I should note for the listeners, I had the
honor of contributing to the subject here was about building a new home for
humanity around a nearby red dwarf sun.And the Ross 2 4 8 system is used as a hypothetical example. My contribution
was an essay on Terraforming planets around Red Wars. Yes. Today we also
wanna talk about the latest volume that you sir have coming out. Well, it's
Interstellar Travel. You're talking about the technical [00:03:00] monograph
series. There are three volumes in that, and the third book is, is called After
Arrival.
Mm-hmm. And, and that'll be out. Uh, I actually, I think by early September,
maybe even late August, I've forgotten. The publisher is an academic publisher.
It's Elsevier. Mm-hmm. And, uh, their schedule moves things around. And the
last I've heard is it's, it's any, any week now, I think it'll be out. Yes. August
29th, according to their, their website right now.
Excellent. And yes, this in particular volume, the third in the volume there, I
also had the honor of contributing to. Once again on the subject of terraforming,
but more broadly, so less naturally, there's any number of places I, I would love
to start, but I think the best thing would be can you tell the listeners how you got
into nasa?
Right. The road that brought you to all the prominent roles, he occupied there
for many, many years. Well, I give, give [00:04:00] credit, uh, to two things that
happened before I was 12, one when I was seven, and that's my parents woke
me up. To watch Neil Armstrong land on the moon. I, I was, uh, born in earlier
in the sixties and I was a young, young boy when I was awakened and told I had
to watch this.
This is important and I didn't really fully appreciate it at the time, but later on I
did. And it's odd. I remember more about the TV set that we watched it on than
I do the, the landing itself, black and white TV with blue sides. Um. But then,
uh, a little bit later, I guess when I was about 12, my older sisters let me stay up
with them late on a Friday night to watch reruns of Star Trek, the original series.
And after that, man, I was hooked. I wanted to become a scientist, work for
NASA and work on building the enterprise. So I had kind of as a single-minded
focus all the way from middle school. Through, you know, high school, college,
graduate school. I wanna work for nasa. And if you, I'm getting ready to go to
my, uh, uh, [00:05:00] high school reunion in East Kentucky and been trading
messages with people.
And, uh, the recurring theme from that is, oh, we knew you were gonna do that
when we were in high school with you. So it's been a dream of mine for a long
time and I feel really, really blessed to have been able to, um. To been able todo that, that, uh, God gave me the gifts, I have to be able to do the math and,
and be involved in the scientific process and have the doors open so that I could,
could do what I really had dreamed about since I was a child.
Yes. And as I understand it, your, your name did come up, uh, while I was
doing a Looky-Loo there with the, the 100 year Starship Project. And that
something that I've never actually talked about on this show. So what, uh, what
was your involvement? A and b? Can you give us a little, little bit of a little
blurb on what that was?
Sure. Well, [00:06:00] it was, uh, the late two thousands. There was a lot of
interest in activity in ultra deep space flight. I had been involved in an activity at
NASA JPL, looking at a successor mission to Voyager. Where I was the lead
for the propulsion system, element concepts for technologies that would let us
build a spacecraft that could leave the solar system three times faster than
Voyager.
So that was kind of a heady time there at JPL and there were a lot of people
looking at that and, and people think, starting to think about that ultimate
voyage, you know, to a distant, distant star. Well, at about that time there was
someone at DARPA whose name I, I don't recall, the, the US Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency who wanted to instill some kind of stretch
goal for a hundred years that would foster creation and innovation of
technology, et cetera, and wanted to establish kind of a foundation to do that.
And they actually put out a [00:07:00] procurement, like honest to goodness
government. Request for proposals went out. And I was not part of a team that
responded. I didn't, 'cause I was working at NASA and I, I couldn't respond to
something like that or even be a part of a team. 'cause it was another
government agency that basically said, we don't want, you know, other
government groups involved in this.
We want this to be totally, uh, private. And several teams competed. And one,
uh, team that was headed up by the astronaut, may Jemison was selected. And
she moved out and she established this, uh, a hundred year Starship
organization. They had some, uh, initial kickoff meetings, uh, gathering the
world's experts together in various places to discuss this.
I had symposia. They had workshops, and it was after it began that they opened
up the call for ideas to come in. And that's where I proposed some, some of my
work on solar sail propulsion, laser sail propulsion. And different advanced
propulsion technologies that could take us to the stars. And the next thing[00:08:00] I knew I was going to their meetings and, uh, talking to the experts
and, uh, being among the folks that were thinking about that.
And the a hundred year Starship was very active for better part of the decade of
the 2010s. Um, and it was in that timeframe that a lot of other interstellar groups
popped up that were not well funded by darpa, mostly volunteer groups like
Thet Zero Foundation, the, uh. In initiative for Interstellar Studies and of course
the Interstellar Research Group, which I helped co-found.
And all of that was kind of a feeder and in parallel to this Interstellar advocacy
technology innovation sphere that kind of sprang up around a hundred year
Starship and your book of Travelers got to the stars here is listed as part of their
2023 awards. That's correct. Yep. Yep. They, they do, as one of the, their
outreach efforts, they try to honor, um, and have an award called the Opus
Award for, uh, various contributions to the Interstellar field in the previous
[00:09:00] year.
And in that year, they had, I was just deeply honored. I didn't even know I'd
been nominated until I got an, got an email. I wasn't able to attend their meeting.
It was, uh, in Africa. And I was unable to, to go to that particular meeting, and I
found out that the book I wrote for Princeton University Press in late 2022
called A Traveler's Guide to the Stars.
Was selected as the Koppa Award winner for the best long form nonfiction
book of the year related to Interstellar travel and inspiration for deep space
travel. So I was really thrilled. Um, that's my, my books. I've won a couple
awards, but that's one, that's what's near and dear to me because it's really
written by my peers, right?
They're the ones who voted on this, and that means a lot. So I'm very pleased
with that. In fact, uh, well, I, I'll be providing links to all the major publications
here in the episode notes. But yes, this in particular, I haven't yet read this book
or procured it, but it does look very, very interesting. [00:10:00] And so
basically, yes, this is something that of course you did in the, uh, the works that
I, that I can speak to.
Exploration of Interstellar Pulsion. So the bottom line is, at present, the only
really viable means for sending missions to other stars, at least within a human
lifetime, is directed energy propulsion. Well, that's a de that, that is a hot debate
still. Um, I, I, I tend to be a proponent of that. Because I see a clearer pathway
from where we are today in terms of the technology to where we need to be to
actually mount, uh, what I would call a realistic interstellar voyage.In my book, a Traveler's Guide, I kinda lay out at a layman's level. It's written
for the, for the public, what all those challenges are, and in there I define what I
call a realistic interstellar voyage, because right now. The Voyager probes,
which are beyond the edge of the solar system, are going fast enough that they'll
leave the Stu the [00:11:00] Sun and never come back.
They've gotten solar system escape and they will pass. They will go the distance
of Proximus Centara if they were pointed in the right direction, which they're
not. But if they were, they would reach it in about 70,000 years. So we're
already launching our first probes to the stars. But I don't consider a 72,000 year
flight time to be realistic.
I, I mean, I, I, I think it'll happen. Yes, but no, that's not what I mean. So I kind
of ground rule realistic interstellar travel to be time, time trip times of, you
know, a few hundred years, no more than a thousand years. And I, I think, you
know, we don't have any capability to do that today. Uh, but the, the
technologies needed for, uh, beamed energy, offboard directed energy sales, for
instance, using lasers to shine off big solar sails seems to be a clearer path than
some of the alternatives.
Uh, among the alternatives are nuclear fusion propelled spacecraft, anti-matter
propelled spacecraft, [00:12:00] that kind of thing, which are physically doable.
But I think the technical challenges to building them are a lot harder and would
take longer for us to manage. In fact, we, we had a chance to talk about this in a
previous episode, uh, which I titled going Interstellar.
And let's see, that was the 25th episode of the show, which is really, really quite
interesting. Uh, we are now up to, uh, 108 if I, excellent. If I, yeah, if I put this
one in the queue directly behind the, the web naming controversy. Yeah. Well,
108. Wow. And yes. And this, this takes me back also after the eighth interest
dollar symposium.
We had a chance to talk about this stuff as well. So, have there been many
developments since that day? It was really only two years ago, but are we any
closer? Have there been any developmental milestones since then that would
suggest well. [00:13:00] Actually, unfortunately, I think we've kind of
regressed. Mm-hmm.
Um, two years ago, we were still, uh, holding expectation that the privately
funded Breakthrough Starshot initiative, which was, uh, funded, uh, by
philanthropist and Silicon Valley, that was, uh, looking at using, uh, highenergy lasers and, uh, very small sail with very small instruments. It was an idea
conceived by Dr.
Phil Lubin. At, uh, U uc, Santa Barbara. So I have to give credit for the
intellectual credit where it's due. It was Phil's idea and got picked up by a
hundred year Starship, but the a hundred year Starship program and project IE
funding to try to make that happen looked like it was gonna go, and then it was
put on hold.
And it, my understanding is they haven't said it's officially canceled and that,
that, I may have missed it if they did, but the last I heard was that it, the whole
project was on hold. And you combine that with the fact that, uh, the, uh, solar
sail work that I was working on in my day job at nasa, uh, that [00:14:00] sail
was supposed to fly this year.
Uh, but there were some technical problems, not with the sail, but with the
spacecraft that caused that project to be stood down. And it looks like now at
best, the soonest that something like that will fly from NASA would be 2029.
So if I had to tell you, Matt, I think we've actually stalled. Uh, unfortunately.
Yes. I wish I could come in and tell your listeners, Hey man, we're on our way
to the stars, but I think we stalled. Yes. Now in your time at NASA there, uh, I
assume you, you crossed, uh, paths with Harold Sonny wife and the NASA
Eagle works. I have now. I know Sonny fairly well. Yep, I sure do. Yes. So,
yeah, he is, I should say he was then at NASA and now through the private
sector pursuing the, the big long shot idea, right?
The idea of warp, uh, warp nasal, and, uh, alcu beer metrics. So just [00:15:00]
how I, I, I feel I know what the answer's gonna be here, but, uh. Do you think
that that is something that could hold promise for humanity someday? Someday
is pretty wide open, Matt? Um, indeed. I, I like someday questions, you know,
almost anything you can think of that's not physically impossible, could happen
someday.
Um, but that's, that's the issue for me with the, the whole, uh, work metric. Mm-
hmm. I am not a, um. Okay. General relativist expert on Einstein's general
relativity and the whole notion of being able to do the modeling of other folks
with regard to what that means. But my, um, educated lay person in that field
opinion is based on my understanding of the fundamental physics require
physics requirements.And the math all works for a warp bubble. And it was pioneered by a fellow
named Al. A physicist, and it makes a lot of sense. [00:16:00] Except, except it
requires the existence of something we've never observed, which is called
negative mass. And so in, uh, in the universe as we observe anything that we see
that's physical, it has gravity and it has positive mass, and that means it's an
attractive force.
Negative mass would be something that's got mass, but it's a repulsive force.
We haven't found that. But if we do. Then the Enterprise Warp drive is ours. So,
um, we just have to figure out if that can be real in nature and if it can, it sure
looks like the math works out to allow us to create these warp bubbles and
actually warp space time to travel relative to the f we're in now faster than the
speed of light, which would be amazing.
Mm-hmm. And I remember reading, uh, negative mass would also give us the
ability to do artificial gravity. Oh yeah, I, I, you, you know, carrying things, it
would be like in Star Trek, right, where they have the grab, grab off loaders is
kind of a negative mass [00:17:00] kind of device there. It kind of shields
against gravity.
I think it would change everything. I mean, getting from the earth to space
would change how we travel, would change where we live would change. Uh, it
would be, uh, a complete societal disruptor and game changer if we were to find
that, which is great. I think a lot of benefits could come from that.
Absolutely. Yeah. Uh, interesting to know that yes, if we could just isolate this,
all that stuff that we wish were true, but we kind of relegate to the science
fiction, uh, bin, then yeah. Suddenly it's possible. Boy. So, to get to this latest
compendium, this mono, I call it a monograph. We, we call it a a three a a three,
uh, monograph series.
Yes. And so they're all entitled Interstellar Travel, but they deal with different
aspects of it. So yeah, can give us a [00:18:00] brief rundown of what, uh,
volumes one and two were about. Well, I can do that. Um, when I began the
book, A Traveler's Guide to The Stars, it was never intended to be a technical
book. In fact, the, the publisher, Princeton Press, for their, for their popular
science line, they basic, they didn't basically say, they explicitly said, don't put
any math.
People, people won't read it. You know, the average person who is not an expert
and is looking in Barnes and Noble for a book to read about space exploration,if they see math, they're gonna put it down. So I wrote the book for the, for the
person who's not necessarily mathematically oriented, but math oriented.
People could get something from it. But it caused me to think, I thought, well,
wait a minute. In the field of this field of interstellar travel, there've been lots of
papers written on all the different aspects of it. Power, propulsion,
communications, life support, governance, cultural, philosophical, you know, all
those kind of things.
But has it all been collected into a cogent, uh, format and volumes that could be
[00:19:00] used like in an, uh, uh, a senior level undergraduate or first year
graduate student course at university? Where, uh, it's like a seminar class on,
you know, all the stuff you have to do to go to the stars. So, Ken Roy, uh, a
good friend of mine and an engineer from a nuclear, uh, engineer from Oak
Ridge, Tennessee, who's been involved with me in a lot of these interstellar
work that I've been doing.
We proposed to the scientific publisher, Elsevier, who does, uh, technical
monographs, textbooks, that kind of thing, a three volume series that would
contain a peer reviewed. Technical for the most part. Papers, uh, that cogently
lay out different aspects of interstellar travel so that it could be used by
universities, it could be used by other people like me.
When I first got into this field as an early career in NASA scientist to say, okay,
what's the status of this field? Oh, okay, there's a book series. I'll go get this
book series [00:20:00] and I'll get up to speed on it. And that was the intent. So
Ken and I used our network of people that we've met during our careers and in
the interstellar field, and we've got a, uh, an incredible lineup of the world's
experts, uh, on these different topics and how they might be used or need to be
developed to go to the stars.
So there's three volumes. The first volume is basically purpose and motivations.
We, why do we want to go? What's the history of exploration? How hard is it
going to be? What are the major challenges we have to overcome? And we have
contributions by some, A-listers. This is not all written by Ken and me. We, we
just edited this and invited, uh, people to come in.
We have the, uh, uh, an exoplanet astronomer, uh, Dr. Angel Tanner. Uh, we
have, uh, Pete Warden, former nasa, uh, uh, Ames Research Center Director,
former general, who is the head of the Breakthrough Starshot and Breakthrough
Listen. Got Greg Matloff, who introduced [00:21:00] me to the field with his,
his seminal work, uh, uh, a Star Flight Handbook, uh, and others.Mason Peck, who is a professor at Cornell, used to be the NASA chief
Technologist. Uh, Giancarlo Genta, one of the pillars of European interstellar
research. Rob Hanson, uh, professor at Wake Forest in the medical school
talking about the biological aspects. So, and more, uh, and it just, just a great,
great book.
And that was followed up by volume two, which is, uh, propulsion, life support,
communications, all about the voyage. And there we continue talking about
how do we communicate with earth? What's the propulsion system? We get
law, we have, uh, people come in who are experts in philosophy and, and, uh,
sociology and the legal professional.
What kind of governance, if it's a world ship, do you have, and of course the
third volume that you contribute to is all about what happens when you get
there. Uh, there won't be an Earth 2.0. Just forget it. You're not gonna have a
Star Trek Class M planet that you conveniently find, and you can breathe the air
and eat the food [00:22:00] and live there.
It's just not gonna happen. So we have to be prepared for either modifying the
worlds we go to for us, modifying us for those worlds, or finding a way to live
on the asteroids and moons of the solar system and artificial constructs, and
that's where your whole terraforming expertise came into play. So we really
appreciate you contributing.
Yes. Well, thank you for using the word expertise there. In fact, I, uh, while
previewing this episode in, uh, another one, I, yeah, uh, I did, uh, use the term
resident expert, but you know, with irony and also the caveat that I didn't say
that, I believe it was, uh, Fraser Ka who said that, that he was. Relaying that.
But yeah, I, I was very honored to be designated as such. Yeah. Now in terms
of, yeah. Other contributors to this latest edition here, I am very geared to get
my hands on it. [00:23:00] 'cause I definitely, definitely want to, uh, prove what
some of the other things that were explored now. Uh, Ken Roy, he is well
known for his Shell Worlds concept, and that is.
Part and parcel a terraforming there, right? It's build a basically a, a, an
enclosing structure around the planet so that you can make all these changes to
its surface and its atmosphere, and then the shell comes off, uh, or, or not. Or
not depending. I, I think most of what he talks about is a lower gravity world.
Mm-hmm. Where it would never otherwise be able to keep its atmosphere. So
he basically is creating an Earth 2.0 with a roof. Yes. Um, and it's a really goodidea because it's passively supported through pressure, uh, atmospheric pressure
and the natural forces that it would encounter if it's engineered correctly, and
give you a way to build up an atmosphere on an otherwise, uh, air airless moon.
Um, which you [00:24:00] have to have a low gravity in order to build the
structure. So it's a really innovative idea for how we might do a, a different kind
of terraforming. Mm-hmm. And also the issues, other issues that are explored
there. Uh, governance, communication, right? We're not just talking about
technology or, well, terraforming is, uh, a process, right?
Not just, uh, ecological engineering or technology, but also. Social questions.
And that's a big one, isn't it? Well, it is because the, the weak link for just about
anything we humans do is us, right? Uh, the foibles, the differences of opinion.
You have to look no further than our current political discourse to see that,
right?
And, and so what we need to do is we need to figure out, uh, the, the approaches
that'll help keep a coherent cogent. Group of people who may not be the original
or not likely to be the original people who left, but it'll be their descendants, uh,
who reached some of [00:25:00] these planets to, to do the colony and
settlement and, and to live there.
Um, and so I think it's vital and, and I'm also of the opinion that interstellar
travel, if it's ever going to happen, it's going to have to have the support of the
whole human species, not just a bunch of scientists and engineers. That's why
we need the sociologists. We need the lawyers. Uh, we need the philosophers.
We need all the people to look at the aspects of what it means to have a, a
human civilization. So to me, it all kind of rolls together in that last volume of,
you know, what, what do you do when you get there? How do you set up
governance? Uh, what are the risks? Um, those kind of things. Really important.
Yes.
And I, I wanna thank you for mentioning the generation aspect there, because
it's, I was immediately reminded there, just seeing chapters there on.
Governance and so forth, but similar work has been done regarding generation
ships, right? Mm-hmm. How, how do we [00:26:00] ensure that all these
settlers aboard this big ship there, that they're all sort of, they're all breathing in
the same air and all sort of stuck together.
How do we ensure that they don't kill each other or, or revert to, or. Yeah. So
the idea has been explored pretty well in science fiction, I think, too. It's like,yeah, what if, uh, what if they have some kind of, uh, Lord of the fly scenario
here and completely forget that they're on a ship Right. Time passes and they're
just going along living in this self-contained world.
Yeah. So yes, extending that further, that's a very interesting idea. How do they
live when they get there and, yeah. And can you plan for stuff like that? Well, I,
I was, uh, brought, brought to my attention in some of this by a fellow named
Mike Masa. And Mike Masa has a background of providing security for very
wealthy clients.
[00:27:00] And, uh, he can't say who any of them are. And it's his previous life,
right? He's got all these NDAs. But he, um, was talking about the proceed, the,
the, the way that we voluntarily you and me. Voluntarily surrender some of our
civil liberties for the good of those people around us under certain
circumstances.
And he gave the example of when you get on an international flight, right? You,
you have certain rules you have to obey. When the pilot says Sit down, you
don't get up and assert your right of independence and say, I'm not sitting down.
You sit down because there's turbulence coming. Right? Um. And you, you, you
voluntarily are searched before you get on the plane.
Of course, it's not really voluntary, it's if you want to get on the plane, you have
to be searched, but if you want to go, you, you do that. And, and that's not
something that, you know, most of us in the west are just gonna casually say,
okay, whenever I go somewhere, you can search me to [00:28:00] see I've got a
weapon.
So there, there are things that we're gonna have to consider for these world ships
and ultimately when we arrive that we may not like. Uh, those of us who have a
bit of a, of a libertarian streak, you know, in terms of what we think about our
rights as individuals, we may not like what we have to give up.
Uh, for some of these things, for the, for the security of the trip. For sure. Um,
and, and it's, it's an interesting exploration. And so we've had some people
explore that the governance chapter and volume three is not written by by him,
but, uh, someone else who, who looked at the issues of, of governance. And so
anyway, I, it, it's a fascinating topic.
Mm-hmm. I can't wait to see it. And of course there's the question of what if
there's somebody there? Uh, of course, yes. All, all things considered there's
going, there may very well be life there. Uh, when we say someone, at least inmy case, I'm thinking, yeah, what if we encounter an advanced [00:29:00]
civilization there or a civilization that's technologically dependent?
So that is in there too. I'm getting more excited here. Can't wait to get my free
copy. Yes. Well, that's a darn good question. What do we do? Yes. Well, and so
yeah, there are also, uh, chapters on analogs, right? So for lunar settlements and
Mars settlements. Now in the case of Mars, that's actually an issue if we're
going to be, uh, setting, setting down there, putting down roots in Martian soil.
What about possible life and have you read Red Mars? I have. I Kim? Yes.
Mm-hmm. Kim Stanley Robinson. Yeah. Yep. I have. And I thought what he
said there was kind of kinda the last word stuff, right? We don't know if life is
here. It could be deep underground. So we're not gonna worry about us
changing the surface, but those changes will trickle down [00:30:00] what is our
moral responsibility And yeah, that comes up in terraforming.
This comes up in Interstellar Travel too. So, yeah. What are your, my personal
opinion on that is I kind of go back to the Star Trek Prime directive and, and I
extend that to microbes personally. If, if we go to another living world, then we,
we, we really shouldn't monkey with it. Um, now a lot of people would disagree
with me, and, and the best argument I've ever heard in that respect is, well, yes,
scientific knowledge is one thing we need to consider, but why would we let
those decisions be made just on the basis of that as opposed to economic?
Or some other interests that also arise where there are gonna be moral questions
and practical and pragmatic questions. And I thought, well, you know, you got a
point. Um, I, I, I'm a scientist, so I tend to think, you know, a science is high
priority, but [00:31:00] other people don't place the same priority on that and
they might place, you know, economic development or resources higher on the
list than that.
So that's why we're gonna have a debate about this topic. Personal opinion, it is
unlikely that we're going to find life. I think life, uh, based on what we see from
in our own solar system and what we have not seen in the stars is uh, kind of
indicative that the universe is probably mostly cold or hot and dead and
inhospitable to life.
And that's why we need to take life elsewhere because if this earth is as rare. As
I think it is, then I believe we have a moral obligation to protect and protect the
planet earth. We're the cradle of life for us and spread that life as far and wide as
we can because the universe otherwise is likely to be mostly empty and mostly
dead.And I, I think life is good and we need to [00:32:00] spread it around. That's,
that's, yeah. Very good summation. Life is good and. And that that has come up
there too. I've heard that, uh, the moral imperative should be that yeah. Where,
where life does not exist, you should, uh, plant the seeds. And I've, I've also
heard it said that if we can, uh, enhance, or, or yeah.
Again, in, in the case of Mars there, if we can. To cultivate the biology that's
there or the, the living species that actually are there species that would've had
a, would've had a chance. If Mars hadn't become so cold and irradiated, then
why not do that? And that too. Interesting. Yes. Yes. Cindy, I think we should, I
mean, yeah, it, it just makes perfect sense and it gives a, a, a, in the long
term.[00:33:00]
Not in the near term. In the long term, you know, the earth is, has been damaged
and faced mass extinctions in its past. Um, I read a great book called When Life
Nearly Died, and it was about the Permian extinction, which happened before
the one everyone talks about, which was the KT extinction that wiped out the
dinosaurs.
This is the one that happened before the dinosaurs ruled, right? Mm-hmm. And,
um, it, it was a, a volcanic event. That in modern day Russia that spewed so
much into the atmosphere that, uh, there was no sunshine for, uh, I don't
remember. It may have been thousands of years. Uh, acid rain changed the pH
of the oceans and 90% of all the species on earth died.
And, uh, when conditions improved, that 10% is what then repopulated the
planet. So, you know, those things happen, uh, in about 5,000 years from what I
[00:34:00] understand. North America's going to have a real problem with the
Yellowstone super volcano erupts. Mm-hmm. Uh, even you, Canadians will
have a problem when that happens.
And so North America is gonna be a mess in about 5,000 years, which on a
geologic timeframe is nothing. Um, so, you know, these things are gonna
happen that are totally out of our control and, and they can have devastating
impacts on life and civilization. And so having, you know, this escape valve
where we have a way to spread it and protect what's here, I think it's essential.
Mm-hmm. Backup locations if, if you will. Yeah, absolutely. That's, yeah. That
is the buzz word that I've heard you used, uh, pretty fairly often. And yes, I
would quote Elon Musk on that back before he started saying just some very
unquotable things. But yes, he's hardly alone in that respect there. In fact, uh,
Stephen Hawking was a big proponent of that too.Just the idea that [00:35:00] yeah, sooner or later something might come to get
us. Oh, and of course, Robert Subin, right? Yes. It, it, it's good to get out there
and. Be able to see and even able control where the asteroids go because sooner
or later one might hit earth and kaboom. Boom. There you kaboom. You're
right.
Yeah. And if we have enough notice, we can maybe do something to prevent
that from happening. And maybe in 5,000 years we'll be able to figure out how
to turn off the Yellowstone super volcano. Mm-hmm. But who knows, right?
We, we've gotta prepare and we have to plan for all contingencies. Yes. So in
terms of exoplanets, right, given the huge, huge explosion in, uh, candidates and
confirmed ones that have happened, there's since Kepler, do you ever, do you
have any favorites do you think, oh, I, I'd really like to see that one, or My
money is on this one being a good [00:36:00] second home for humanity
someday.
Well, I do as a matter of fact, and Travis Taylor and I have written about that in
our science fiction novel series, uh, that we call Saving Proxima. The second
book was Crisis at Proxima, and that's proxima B. Now, this is not a planet
circling the famous Alpha Centa, which is a star that you can see if you live in
the Southern Hemisphere.
And by the way, I'm gonna be a total nerd and tell you when I was in Australia.
We went up into the Grampian Mountains on a cool dry night, and one of the
purposes of going was to look up and find the southern cross a constellation you
can't see in the Northern Hemisphere and look at alpha Centara because I've
been writing about it and reading about it my whole life, and I had never seen it
because you can't see it if you live north of the equator.
So we were in the Southern hemisphere and I had to take everybody in our
group out and point it out. There's the target right there, but that's not what I'm
talking about. There's another star. It's a red dwarf. It's a little closer to the
[00:37:00] earth. Proximus Centara, it's part of the Centara system and it has
planets, and one of those is Proxima B, which looks like it's in the habitable
zone, which means it's close enough that it could be liquid water, not
necessarily frozen, uh, not necessarily boiling.
Uh, it looks like it's tide locked, unfortunately, which makes it a lot more
complicated. But, um, I, it's my favorite because I, it's close and it, it's in the
habitable zone. And darn it, why not? Let's go. Yeah. In fact, yes, it, it is the
closest rocky planets to the solar system. Unless, unless there's some rogue
planets out there that we don't know about, I guess.But yeah, they they come and go, don't they? They do, but um, indeed. Yeah.
Well, yeah. Me, me too. Ever since they announced, uh, the, they, they made,
went public with the, the findings about it there in 2016. And I, I remember
getting to report on that at the time, and it [00:38:00] was so exciting. Oh, and I,
I do hope it's not, uh, uh, one of those eyeball planets as we've been hearing
about or just all icy.
Um, yeah. Are there any others? Like, do you think Atory? No, that's, that's the
one that really, that's the one that really leaps out at me. Um, we, in the, in the
anthology series that you pointed out, Ross 2 48, we, we don't know much about
it. We don't even know if it has planets because it's not aligned for us to be able
to, to tell that from our, our vantage angle.
But it might, you know, lot turns out that most, uh, extra solar stars like our star
have planets. And, uh, so it, it could have some, and Ross 2 48 has the
advantage, and I've forgotten how many tens of thousands of years. But in, in, in
not too far in the future, it'll actually be closer to our star than proximal centara.
So, uh, I hope we don't need 30,000 years or whatever it is to be ready to go to a
interstellar voyage, but if we do mm-hmm, then [00:39:00] that'll be one that's
even closer. And our descendants might have that as an option, uh, because
there's bound to be planets in, in that star system. Yeah. In fact, red Dwarf Suns,
they're pretty good at making rocky planets.
At least that's what the data seems to, to suggest. And yeah, I was surprised to
see that of the, uh, 30 or so candidates, rocky planets that are near to the solar
system, 28 are red dwarf systems. Whew. And you gotta think that there's
something, something going on there. They, they have a pretty good roll of the
dice, those, uh, those stars.
So yes, in terms of, I mean, obviously we cannot possibly speculate about
whether or not there would be life on proximal B, but it being habitable right
there is. Some. Yeah. [00:40:00] It and yeah, the, the base, it could be it. I mean,
and that's why it was fun to play with in a science fiction story because it's, it's
not beyond, it's not beyond the stretch of imagination that it might be habitable.
Right. Mm-hmm. And, and that's great. A lot of these exoplanets, you look at
'em and you say, there's no way earth life could survive there, or life could be
there as we know it, but there are a few that look like they might be maybe, you
know? Mm-hmm. Depends on if the other roles of the dice happen to favorably
as to whether they're there or not, right?Yes. I'm reminded that in fact I have a copy of Saving Proximus Centura. It's
just unfortunately in a pretty big pile and, but yeah, I did start it, and of course
the premise is very grabby at first there. And so yeah, the sequel, uh, what was
the name of the sequel? It's actually not a sequel. It's a three book series and, uh,
the second book is called Crisis at [00:41:00] Proxima.
Mm-hmm. And, uh, the third book, Travis and I are writing that right now, and
it doesn't have a title yet, so I, I can't really tell you what it'll be called. We'll
know that after we finish. And, uh, the publisher picks the title because, uh, this
may not be something that your audience knows, but a lot of books, the author
doesn't select the title that comes from the publishing house.
They may have a title going in and something radically different comes out. I, I
just, I read for the first time, Hemingway's a Farewell to Arms and, uh, you
know, he won all kinds of awards. Nobel Prize winning writer. Uh, and in the
back of the book, they had a note that when he submitted it to the publisher, I
think there were like 30 optional titles for that novel.
Mm-hmm. And the one that was finally settled on was a farewell to arms. So
you, you never know, I, and of course, you know, I have high aspirations that
our books will be on somebody's list with Hemingway someday, of course.
Which is very unlikely. But, um, nonetheless, it's the publishers who pick that.
Mm-hmm.[00:42:00]
Wow. That. Not encountered that yet. I hope I do someday, but yes. Okay. And,
uh, I noticed you have a copy of Saving Proximus Centara, uh, right behind you,
or Sa Saving Proxima, and it's just visible in the background there and Yeah.
You're talking about the poster I have for it back there. Yep, yep. Yes, I should
have it closer in view, but nobody's gonna see it on your, your audio podcast.
But I, the publisher is really good to me. They send these placards so that when
I go to book signings. I can put those on the table and have a big, a big cover,
uh, and not just rely on the small, you know, hard cover mm-hmm. Or whatever
it is. And that, that's really nice. Yeah. Uh, get to get, to get a few perks.
They don't do much to publicize for the author, but when they send stuff like
that to us, we make use of it. Okay. Yeah, it does. I was just thinking there that,
that's in the background there. That does look. Awfully large for paperback.
Maybe it's a hard cover. It'd be a massive paperback. Yes. Yeah. Super
[00:43:00] large.It's about, uh, well that's at least two and a half. It's at least two feet tall. Two
and a half feet. Yep. It's pretty good size. Yep. Well, I'm sure some people
would find that especially large print accommodating, you'd have to get way
back from it to read it. Yes. Be, it'd be ridiculously thick too. Okay.
That, that has been a very weird thought experiment there. Okay. So yeah, uh,
getting back to the, uh, interstellar travel. So it will be according to what I'm
seeing just now here on their website, on the Elsevier publication website.
There, it is gonna be coming out the 29th. That is a week from this Friday.
And well, yes. Hopefully, hopefully the author copies, uh, are gonna be coming
around about the same time 'cause that I, I, myself am uh, pretty interested to
see what else is in there. Well, you're supposed to get a copy. All of the lead
authors that [00:44:00] contributed chapters are supposed to get their coffee and
I have to, uh, I have to apologize to listeners being an academic book, it's
considered like a textbook, uh, which means unlike my other works, which are
popular science and science fiction by mass market publishers.
These are textbooks, which means they're gonna be over a hundred dollars US
each, um. Mm-hmm. And that's, that's kind of on the pricey side, but that's an
academic press, right? That's, that's what they run these days. Yeah. And I
would totally recommend to listeners, uh, if you're, if you're hoping for a
sample, a preview of what that is.
And I would definitely recommend checking out the books going Interstellar,
the Ross 2, 4, 8 project, because I am not sure if we even mentioned this. It's,
these are both. Scientific essays and science fiction stories. So it's very applied
science and uh, yeah, well applied science fiction. Science applied well.
That was the intent science fiction. Um. We modeled it after [00:45:00] things
like Analog Magazine, which is, it used to be astounding, the long running
magazine of science fiction, where they have mostly science fiction stories, but
they have science fact articles in them. And so, uh, for the going Interstellar
anthology, uh, Jack McDevitt, who's one of my favorite writers, by the way, if
you haven't read Works by Jack, you, you need to, he's just quite a, quite a.
Visionary and creative writer, bestselling writer. Uh, we proposed, uh, original
stories that we solicited from various authors, not just us, uh, about interstellar
travel, realistic interstellar travel. And then we did my list of people I know in
the field to write popular science nonfiction, accessible essays, kind of the
science behind the fiction.And then the publisher BA books actually hired a professor to do a teacher's
guide. For the book and gave that away free in PDF. And so I've heard from a
few schools where this book was actually brought into some high schools
[00:46:00] and was used, uh, in the, the literature class. They would read the
stories and oh, by the way, they had to learn a little science 'cause they read the
science behind the fiction.
And then in the science classes, the kids would devour the science behind the
fiction and oh darn, they had to do some literary criticism in reading when they
had to read the story stories. So it was really kind of perfect to do the cross
disciplinary, uh, you know, education thing with, uh, high school students.
Ab well, absolutely. Um. As someone who didn't really do science there as, as
part of their education there, you know, at least not at a university level. It's like,
it is really cool to study this kids to do it, especially if you're just doing it for
yourself, right? They'll make you take it in school, and quite frankly, it's gonna
come up later.
So please don't bother your teacher with questions of, oh, when am I gonna use
this? I mean, right. Well, yeah, that's [00:47:00] right. Of course, I'm kind of old
school about education and that is that the purpose of an education is to be
knowledgeable about many things, not just an expert in your field. Mm-hmm.
Um, I would venture to say, uh, I mean, I went on to get a graduate degree in
physics, but my undergraduate is a ba.
I have an Art Bachelor of Arts degree and I was probably the only chief
technologist at nasa if I had to guess that had a BA and not a bs. Um, because
most of the chief technologists, you know, went and, and got straight
engineering undergraduate degrees before perhaps getting their masters or PhD
in engineering, uh, after that.
But I went for a liberal arts degree and took all of the field sociology,
psychology philosophy, American literature, world history, all that in addition
to physics, which is my discipline of choice, and I loved it. It, it really helped
me, uh, broaden my thinking. So I'm a big believer in a liberal arts [00:48:00]
education.
Mm-hmm. Well, it, it, it, I'm sorry. It sounds like you just, you've lived my
dream as, although Yes, I didn't, uh, I, I haven't pursued astrophysics or any,
anything along that lines, uh, since school, I actually, I, I planned to go back. I
want to at some point go back and, and get a degree in astronomy and ask. Or
astrophysics because it's like, well, that's what I do now.But yeah, it, it was the same for me before liberal arts and history literature, and
I think that's a very good thing to pair. It's too late. Yes, it's never too late. Matt,
my wife and I just last spring. Completed a two year part-time course and got
our associate's degree in ministry. Right. So really we, yeah, we're both
Christians and we decided we wanted to, uh, get more knowledgeable about our
faith and understand more of the, the, the basis of it in a, in a structured kind of
way.
And so [00:49:00] we took a, a, a class with tests and term papers and
everything else that we did two nights a week. Uh, four hours a night for two
years and, uh, got our associate's degrees. So, uh, it was a great experience
being back in school. It's kind of hard to do while you're doing a full-time job
and all the other stuff that I do, but it was worth every minute of it.
And I'm, I'm a firm believer you can never stop learning. Uh, don't ever hang it
up. So if any of your listeners are saying, oh, I'm, I haven't, you know, it's too
late for me to change careers or to go do something, no, it's not. Just go do it if
you can afford it. And I realize not everybody has the means to do that, but if
you do and you want it, you can find the time.
Mm-hmm. And if you just wanna learn about this stuff, you can do that too,
right? Absolutely. Without having to pay for a formal education. Yep.
Absolutely. Yes. Makes me mis teaching. But you know, this, uh. I, [00:50:00] I
do not, uh, I don't regret getting into writing 'cause that's been really, really
cool. And I get to meet people like you, so, well, it's mutual.
Matt. I've enjoyed our conversations and our correspondence and, uh, I hope we
cross paths again in the not too distant future. Well, yes, and I, I also hope for
that too. I, I really hope that I can get out to an IRG symposium and, and, or a
book launch or book sighting. I mean, we've done a few of these now.
I'd like to be there when they're actually, uh, being promoted and being talked
about. And yes, and of course, well, this is now your second time on the show.
Well, I look forward to a third. Well, thank you. I'm very honored. It's been
great, Matt. It's always good to talk to you and like I said, I've enjoyed working
with you.
Uh, your contributions, uh, to, to both of those works have been great. And one
of the things that, that I think that you've learned and I've learned is that the
[00:51:00] field of terraforming a. Is ripe for, uh, people to get into and do some
creative new contributions. So if any of your listeners are technically minded,
read some of Matt's stuff about terraforming, uh, his blogs, uh, the chapters forthese books, and do a good, uh, Google Scholar search and you'll find out that
this field is wide open.
And if you want to be the first to make a contribution in an important long-term
space development field, I would say there's none as underdeveloped as
terraforming. Right now. Yes. And it's, it'd be really important to get some
bright minds in there to start working on those challenges. Yes. And it, it has
applications here on earth where we are currently terraforming the planet, but in
a, in a very bad way.
You're exactly right. Yep. You're right. Yes. And yeah. And there there's smart
money that says we are not going to solve the issues of climate change. Without
doing active climate restoration [00:52:00] and ecological engineering, basically
trying to Yes. Repair the damage we've already done. Well, and you know, I, I
look forward to our next topic of conversation, our next, uh, episode as Lord, as
there's so much to cover, really between space flight, space exploration,
interstellar exploration, terraforming ecology, and how people are gonna live.
If ever you need someone to contribute to a, a volume about generation ships.
Uh, yeah. I think I may have missed the bus on that one. Going Interstellar
pretty much covers that, doesn't it? A lot of it does, but there'll be other works
that other folks are gonna be doing and you can bet that your chapter in volume
three of this monograph will get the attention of those folks when they do, uh,
lit searches to find people to contribute.
Your name will pop up. Excellent. Oh. Yes, I like popping up. Okay. Well
thank you so much. Well, [00:53:00] yes, well thank you for so much for
coming on, and yes, I hope to talk to you again soon. Thanks for having me. It's
good to be here. Bye-bye. And thank you to all my listeners for tuning in, and as
I said, I'm gonna be posting links to all the aforementioned books, including the
Interstellar Monograph series in the episode notes, so stay tuned for that.
In the meantime. Listen, I'm Matt Williams and this has been Stories from
Space.