Tell me how to feel about space — The Assignment

[0:02] Hey, everyone, it's Audie. This is The Assignment. And where were you when Artemis II touched down? [0:08] Sagerty, splashdown, sending post landing command now. [0:13] Yes. Hank, welcome home. Christina, welcome home. [0:18] It may be one of those stories in the latest chapter of space. And the stories of space, [0:26] you know, they evoke a lot of things. There's joy, there's inspiration, there's fear. Frankly, [0:32] there's just like embrace in the face of this very scary news cycle. It's like a throwback to a [0:39] simpler time somehow. Of course, once you dig into it, you realize those times weren't that simple. [0:44] But my guest today is astrophysicist Hakeem Olusheye. He knows everything there is to know [0:50] about space. He used to work at NASA, and he's going to help me parse through [0:54] all of the complicated feelings we have in this new era of space exploration. Stay with us. [1:01] So I watched the touchdown of Artemis II, gathered the kids, brought them into the living room, [1:15] had it on the big screen. And I'm not going to lie. I was scared. I was really scared. Because [1:23] when I was seven, when I was my children's age, the Challenger disaster, okay, where there had been a [1:31] teacher in space program. So all the little kitties had been told to gather around, you know, [1:36] live feed to the classrooms. But then when I was in college, there was the Columbia. And that disaster [1:43] was on re-entry, right? Am I remembering that right? That was in 2003. [1:49] Yeah, I was in my early 20s for Challenger and in my early 30s for Columbia. And subsequent to that, [1:55] I had a career as a space researcher. And I also am aware of, you know, like Astro-E experiment blowing [2:03] up on the launch pad. So I am always thinking about the safety of the people that are on board these [2:11] giant rockets. I am holding my breath at every takeoff and every re-entry. So in this mission for me, [2:19] on re-entry, if you look at the video, you'll see that one of the three parachutes opened up a bit [2:25] later than the others. And I wasn't sure it was going to open fully. And that really had me on the [2:30] edge of my seat. And then once it fully deployed, that's when I finally gave that sigh of relief, [2:36] was filled with that sense of elation, and couldn't stop smiling for, you know, two or three days. [2:43] That's when my kids were jumping on the couch. There was a lot of like, you know, they were [2:50] ecstatic. They were so happy. And I was happy for them. And it was a reminder of, it felt like a good [2:58] moment to talk about why space travel, real space travel kind of draws this out of us. And why this [3:08] one in particular, the Artemis II, like kind of captured something. And first, I want to say that [3:15] unlike the 1960s, back then, getting to the moon, it was important. And it was also politically [3:23] important because it was this like other battleground, right? It wasn't just about space [3:28] exploration. It was about beating other countries, of course, the Russians to getting there. And then [3:34] for a while, frankly, it seemed like it was between the US private sector versus the US [3:39] public sector. I mean, I have to assume just about everyone, you know, is working for private [3:45] sector space. [3:47] All of the above. I know both. And here's the thing to understand is that, you know, I was in [3:53] the government public sector working at NASA headquarters. And there is a law that the public [4:00] sector is not allowed to compete with the private sector. So both the public sector and the private [4:06] sector have a role. So the public sector does what only the public sector can do, right? The SLS, [4:14] the space launch system, is a massive investment, a government-sized investment. And when you talk [4:19] about exploring the outer solar system, it's the exact same thing. It requires the government. So the [4:25] government is at the frontier and the edge. And so it's like the difference between basic science and [4:30] engineering. The scientists discover the new ways that the universe works. And then the engineers take [4:37] advantage of it through their technologies. And in the very same way, the federal government pushes [4:42] the limit, pushes the edge, and then they're followed by these commercial interests. [4:46] So that helps me understand, because then that's why I like the SpaceX's and the Blue [4:50] Origins and stuff like that. They're making satellites. They're offering launches. And then [4:56] there's space tourism, this world of like, whatever, suborbital. I don't know. We're getting into the [5:00] stuff that I barely know. But what you're saying is there's a reason for that. Like the stuff we know [5:05] how to do, we're letting the private sector pretty much do. But the stuff we really want to do, [5:10] we still are paying for that as taxpayers. [5:14] Exactly. And what you see is happening with the Artemis mission now is we're creating a new space [5:19] infrastructure that is going to create a new economy. They want to get this to the level of [5:26] a launch every six months, right? Right now, we're doing a launch, you know, every few years. [5:33] My lungs cannot handle that. Am I to be freaked out every six months? What are you saying? [5:37] Well, you know, if you, you know, things, technology start off really dangerous and over [5:42] time they get better. They don't become accident free ever. And sometimes you have to, not sometimes, [5:49] virtually all the time, you have to have a bit of tolerance. We still fly in airplanes. We still [5:54] ride on cars. We still ride on trains. We still ride on ships. And every year those have accidents. [6:00] Space has this incredibly low tolerance for accidents, right? The number of space, you can't, [6:05] you know, when was the last death due to space flight, right? You know, you got to think hard [6:10] about that, but understand that this is a pathway and the government is establishing an infrastructure [6:15] that as much as the internet created new economies and the smartphone created new economies, [6:21] this new space endeavor of our nation will create a new economy. [6:27] I want to touch on something you just said about the accidents are, are still rare, right? Like [6:34] compared to other things, but I feel like when something goes wrong with a space mission, [6:39] it's not just the deaths, it's the death of possibility. And there's something about space [6:45] exploration that we all feel is, is like fundamentally at its core, a hope driven endeavor. [6:55] Love that. Yes. And I don't know if the billionaire thing has kind of changed that. Cause once you see [7:01] like Katy Perry doing it, you're like, you know, like what, what was this for? Um, that was for [7:07] the highest bidder, right? That doesn't feel as exciting. But can you talk about that, that like, [7:13] I don't know any other science, even as important as they all are, that have that kind of layer of [7:20] pressure on them that you see in like pop culture, in the movies and things like that. [7:24] Right. Yeah. The thing about this space endeavor is that it's incredibly inspirational and [7:31] aspirational and it's incredibly visible, right? So if there are people that are on the cutting edge [7:38] of say, boring tunnels or deep sea exploration, you know, unless something goes catastrophic or it's a, [7:46] or it's an individual that is good at bringing attention to themselves, like James Cameron, [7:51] right. Going down in a submersible down to the Titanic, you don't hear about it, but with space [7:56] it's different, right? It's very visible. And because of that, you know, there was a plan for [8:02] the Hubble space telescope originally, that it would be captured by a space shuttle, put into its cargo [8:09] bay, brought back down to earth and placed into the Smithsonian. But after the shuttle accidents, [8:14] you can't risk human lives on doing something that's that dangerous. And I was at the, I was [8:20] at the meeting in Washington, DC many, many years ago when we were having these discussions on what [8:25] to do. And a particular, uh, scientist brought up the fact that, you know, look, you know, this thing [8:31] deorbits on its own and kills one person. It is a major disaster for the space agency and for space [8:39] because of that visibility, but that same person could have walked out of their house, gotten into [8:45] their car and they have a much higher orders of magnitude, higher probability of getting into a [8:50] car accident, but we don't think of it the same way. So it is a matter of, um, perception, visibility, [8:59] framing, and you know, it's like a different risk proposition on, is it worth it? Whatever the it [9:04] is. Right. Right. Um, cause so many things are brought to us from space exploration, so many [9:10] technologies. Um, but I was just thinking like when you look at the movies, right, there's like a run [9:17] of movies. I feel like in the nineties, maybe the odds, what is time where mainly people leave the [9:25] planet to like shoot down asteroids. Right. And then maybe people are in space fighting off aliens that [9:33] they didn't realize they were bringing back home is basically rocket ship as haunted house. Like [9:37] there are all these ways that we, you know what I mean? That's what I consider the alien film. Shout [9:43] out to Ridley Scott. Like they're basically a haunted house, but with female body horror and, and we [9:51] project our fears as much as our hopes. Right. Yes, we do. We project our fears and our hopes into this [9:59] realm, you know, and it's interesting because I remember sitting at my grandfather's knee and he [10:06] watched a lot of Westerns and I remember the popularity of Westerns and now, you know, the [10:12] adventure is space. What a big difference, but we also call it the wild west, right? Like whenever we [10:17] want to talk about unfettered ambition and grand ideas, we say it's the wild west. Right. And you know, [10:24] there's that era of the age of exploration on the high seas, right? In the 19th and 18th centuries [10:30] that we, that humans look at, but these are the stories that we tell and the people that give their [10:36] lives, they become heroes, right? They're heroic figures. And the people that undertake this, you know, [10:42] that they have to be incredibly courageous. And I think that is why we find it so inspirational, [10:47] courageous people doing daring things in dangerous situations. And the result is revealing new [10:54] knowledge, breaking new ground and creating a future for future generations that those people [11:02] themselves never get to see. After the break, Hakeem tells me what he has learned from pondering the [11:09] vastness of the universe. What would you tell the version of you that had doubts, right? In the era when [11:19] people, especially AI, I've been thinking like, oh, we're so excited to get these photos back when [11:23] we're in the age of AI, are people going to believe them? What would you tell the version of you that [11:28] really has had doubts, you know, about science? [11:32] Well, what happened to that version of me is that I got to actually know people who do it, right? And I [11:37] got to actually gain some understanding about things that I didn't know that I didn't know. And, [11:43] you know, I grew up in a, you know, 1970s and 80s deep south and found myself at age 24 in the San Francisco [11:53] Bay Area, very different population of people. And a lot of those people, based on their group, I had opinions [12:02] about them that weren't the most positive. And it had nothing to do with reality. It had to do with narratives, [12:09] right, from the culture I was in. And so we all want to feel special. So, you know, when I got there, [12:15] you know, I was at home and I was hearing, oh, you know, the rich people are like this. And then I go [12:21] there and I'm at Stanford University, elite environment. I'm hearing, oh, the poor people are [12:24] like this. And they're both completely wrong, right? They're both the people completely wrong [12:29] because people are people. And most people are good people in my experience, right? I've been around the [12:33] nation, around the world. I've known people, you know, I hang out with billionaires one day. [12:38] I'm in the hood and next. And another time I'm in the, you know, in the, in the plains of Kenya, [12:43] hanging out with the Samburu tribesmen, right? And people are people. And when you have these [12:50] negative thoughts about groups, you haven't known enough people. That's what that means. [12:57] I noticed that even the astronauts from the Artemis talked about humanity. [13:02] Ultimately, we will always choose Earth. [13:04] It wasn't like just about the U.S. or U.S. ingenuity or that kind of thing. And, [13:14] and to me, kind of making a, a real point in this moment when, you know, the U.S. in particular [13:21] is at war. [13:22] Yeah. And when you do this sort of work where you see the planet as a whole, you see humans [13:29] as a species on a planet, you know, representing, you know, like in rap, they say, I'm going to wrap [13:34] my hood, right? Well, you know, for many of us, our hood is our planet and our species. And I remember [13:41] politically, there was someone who's called themselves a citizen of the world. And they [13:46] take a lot of flack, right? From the nationalist elements in our nation. And I think that's a mistake. [13:52] I do, you know, we know what the aspiration is because it shows up in our science fiction of the [13:56] future, where we're beyond scarcity, we're beyond discrimination, right? We're one human family [14:03] working together. I hope we can achieve that someday. We're not there yet, but, you know, [14:10] these astronauts are doing their part to push forward that perspective. [14:14] Yeah. [14:15] Um, and that hope, right? Because I think that it's a shame that we don't get out of us what we, [14:21] I'm not going to call it wasted humanity, but we're not at a point where everyone gets to decide [14:28] how they're going to live their life and they're well-informed, right? A lot of us act out what we, [14:33] who the world tells us what we are and who we are. [14:36] One of the astronauts, she said that someone asked her kind of what struck her, you know, looking back. [14:41] And she said, and this is really fascinating. She said it was really the, um, the absence around us, [14:48] the darkness around earth. And she was saying it really drove home the idea that we're all [14:54] together in this boat, so to speak. And that there's at least for now, you know, just the [15:01] darkness. And I hadn't heard it put that way, but I've heard it as, Oh, we're all together. We're on [15:07] earth. But I hadn't heard someone say, you know, if you really look around, there is nothing there [15:13] and we are in it together. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, you know, chances are, we're not going to find any [15:19] others. And that's absolutely right. We are in it. You're going to get all the UFO people mad, but [15:25] continue. Absolutely. I get them mad all the time. In fact, online, you know, they're like, he's CIA, [15:29] he's part of the coverup. And I'm like, me? Like, bro, you need to sit down with me and have a chat. [15:35] If you think I'm CIA, you're not holding out to find anyone else. So it's like really making, making [15:42] good with what we've got. The universe is a lonely place because it's so darn big. And that's the thing [15:49] that people, you know, if you don't really take years to ingest and understand till you get to the [15:58] point, like, you know, I reached eventually where I could see the sky in 3D. When you know the distances [16:03] to the objects you're looking at, you know, their sizes. So, you know, you have an intuition built [16:08] in, in your mind that if I know how big something is and I know how, you know, I know by looking at [16:13] how big it appears to be, how far away it really is. Right. And then you see it at its real size. [16:19] Like if you see a human being that's really far away, you know, when I was younger, people just [16:23] played this game. I'm going to squish you. Right. Because you're, you look so small, a person at a [16:27] distance, I'm going to squish them. But you know, in your mind, you see that person's true size. [16:32] So if you know the distance to the moon and you know it's true size and you look up at the night [16:37] sky and see it, you're like, whoa, that thing is massive. Right. That thing is huge. The same way [16:42] with the planet, seeing Jupiter in the night sky, knowing it's 10 times bigger than the earth or the [16:46] sun, knowing it's a hundred times bigger and the distance of 93 million miles. Right. You get, [16:51] you get that sense of like, whoa. And almost no one has that perspective on this planet. Right. [16:58] You got to be some expert nerd who's been doing it for years to develop that in your mind. But once [17:05] you do, you realize that the universe is an incredibly lonely place. You can't unsee it. [17:10] And here we are hanging out in the blackness of space, orbiting this star. And even that statement, [17:17] hanging in the blackness of space, the amount of time I've spent just pondering that. And what does [17:22] that mean to be in the, you know, like for us, something being buoyant in the atmosphere or floating [17:28] on the ocean, it gives you a perspective of a medium and something in it. But space isn't the same, [17:35] you know, it's, and it's strange, you know, and I tell you, it, I understand how people go mad. [17:42] Why do you think this is resonating for the rest of us? [17:45] Oh yeah. [17:45] Don't know the things, you know, like, what is it that this moment, this launch, this re-entry, [17:53] like culturally is grabbing our attention? [17:56] Well, there are a lot of cultural trendsetters. If you go back in the day, [18:00] right, Carl Sagan was a revelation, right? Oh, a, a, a science communicator. And within professional [18:07] circles, the, you know, people at the time say he was punished for being that. Then you have this [18:13] era where you have just a few, the Neil Tyson, Michio Kaku, uh, maybe Brian Cox, right? But now [18:20] you're in an era where every graduate student is a science communicator, right? Every student of [18:25] journalism is an independent journalist. So many people who appreciate this and are able to share [18:31] their passion online has now provided food. You know, there was a time in my early twenties where I [18:37] felt like I had read everything there was to read about, you know, uh, physics and space and, you [18:43] know, weird science. And when you're a consumer of this stuff, there's never enough content. And now [18:50] all these people can feed that attention and feed that curiosity. So the passion is spread much further [18:58] through the population. It might still be a small percentage of people that are paying close attention, [19:03] but you don't, you know, it's like being a, um, a casual observer of the NFL or the NBA. [19:10] Someone in your family watches it. So, you know, the names, right? And so it's the same thing going [19:15] on. I think now with space, because among the sciences, it tends to be the most inspirational [19:20] and attention getting. [19:21] We're in this moment where you have this private sector guy, who's now the head of NASA [19:26] and forever I heard we were going to Mars and everything was about Mars. And now here we are, [19:35] you know, like, and the moon's back in vogue and NASA's back baby. So help me understand what's the [19:43] mission and what should we be listening to going forward? [19:46] The mission changes with administrations to be frank. Right. But this has been a long lasting effort, [19:52] but you know, if you go back in time to the nineties, there have been administrations, you know, [19:58] George W. Bush, we're going to the moon, right. You know, and it just takes time for it to all shake [20:04] out. You know, it's, it's, it's, you can't predict what direction the government is going to go in [20:11] with the new administration. You know, for the most part, there is a cooperation with the past sometimes, [20:18] but then you have these moments where the direction changes. But I think that we are invested to a [20:24] point now where this humans in space moment will continue forward. I think we will achieve our goals. [20:31] Okay. So right now it's just about us getting ourselves in space, not us sending robots to Mars. [20:36] Like you're saying people are back and the moon is back. [20:39] People are back. People are back and the moon is back. And, and, and Mars and, you know, asteroids [20:45] are the next step after this moon endeavor gets established in a stable way. And also, you know, [20:55] there's a lot going on in low earth orbit. You know, you have companies like Planet Labs, [21:00] uh, SpaceX, uh, or, or Elon Musk's, um, Starlink, you know, so there's a lot happening in earth orbit, [21:08] and there's a lot that's going to be happening on the moon. And it's all about establishing an [21:12] infrastructure, just like America required railroads and highways. Space needs to build [21:18] its railroads and highways. And they're cops. I have to say we did not even, and we won't get into [21:23] the space force, which is a branch of the military, you know, that someone's got to populate at some [21:31] point. Um, you know, it's one of those things, you know, it's one of those things, you know, [21:37] Well, here's what I'm saying. You know, back in the eighties, America illustrated its ability to [21:42] shoot down a satellite, right? The Chinese have illustrated their ability to blind and shoot [21:46] down satellites. So even though the military militarization of space was something that [21:51] was on the hush, it was quietly occurring, right? So it's not just the inspiration and aspiration. [21:59] There are geopolitical consequences to this space endeavor. And so what does that mean? You want [22:06] to get the high ground first. It sounds like, and I guess this is a good thing. All these years after [22:13] the end of the shuttle program, we, we are at the start of a new chapter. Absolutely. We are at the [22:18] start of a new chapter. We are pushing a new frontier and this is just the beginning of what's to come. [22:25] Well, thank you so much for talking with us. We really appreciate it. Best of luck. [22:29] Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor.