YouSaid · the spoken record

Caleb Scharf

lines on the record: 76
first: 2020-02-19
most recent: 2020-02-19
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Programs of Columbia, you'll find information about that. It's kind of a community of people working on these questions, but you can get all of that just by searching at Columbia and looking for astrobiology.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Going to be a space for space for gosh, it's certainly true that space is a platform for all sorts of military and intelligence. Activity that we may not really want to have happening and it has the potential for one country to have an edge over another country. But Space Force just feels childish and stupid.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Truly inspirational stuff happening out there. I mean, the Apollo missions for a moment inspired people. I think the first time we got to Mars, we were inspired and so on. There are a lot more frontiers out there, a lot more first-time things to be done. And so increased capacity again into space is tremendously important for that, both scientifically. And I feel at an emotional level for the species.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Even greater emphasis on Earth observation under present administrations around the world, there are some challenges to our ability to monitor what's happening on the planet. So if you talk to climate scientists and earth scientists, they have a thousand ideas for missions that you could put in orbit around the Earth to learn new things about how our planet functions that could help mitigate all the challenges that we're facing. So I think that's a really important thing that could happen and isn't quite happening yet. Then the exploration of our solar system and beyond, I find scientifically fascinating, but I think it's also, it has the potential, as it has in the past, to form a sort of statement about our unity as a species, that we're sorely missing most of the time. And part of it is because we haven't had quite enough”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Drive to bring down the cost of space launch means that they're recycling the boosters and so on. But that is also actually environmentally sound. You're using far fewer resources to get into space. Because in space, there's a lot of terribly important stuff we can do. So I think there should be...”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wow, that puts me on the spot. Space tourism, I feel it would be lovely if it could be available to anyone instead of just the super rich. Because we know that there is something transformative about seeing our planet from on high. It's called the overview effect. And that might be useful. That might be an interesting thing to add to our experience of the world. So I think I'm kind of neutral on space tourism. I think things we absolutely should be doing is, to some extent, what's already happening with SpaceX, which is to get better at putting stuff in space without using so many resources.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“By setting up on the moon, treat that as an experiment. The advantage is it's close. So in principle, if something goes horribly wrong, you get people back or send emergency supplies or equipment or whatever. Mars is a long way off. That doesn't seem to fit in with the vision of, for example, Elon Musk. He's really going for broke. He's just going to take the jump all the way to Mars. That may be the way to do it, but it may be that you're risking... Doing those first experiments”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, the moon is close, which is good, but it is probably more difficult than Mars because the surface environment is even tougher, even stronger temperature variations. Even more exposure to radiation and so on. Mars, I think you can just about imagine walking around on Mars in a reasonably modest spacesuit on the moon. That's not going to happen. You're always going to be bundled up. It's almost an emotional reaction that the moon feels even more alien. Even though it's so close, and in that regard, it would be much, much easier to set up CAP. So it's possible, and I know NASA has talked about this over the years, one strategy would be to learn more about how you do any of this.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So there are plenty of natural resources in principle. It still gets a good amount of solar energy because it's not so very much further from the sun. It's a lot of land to explore. There's actually more surface area on Mars than all of our continents put together on Earth. So as a target of exploration, there's scientific reasons for going there and so on. So I flipped back and forth. You can tell I flipped back and forth between Mars's. God awful, and you shouldn't go there, and we should do a better job here on Earth to, well, you know, really long term, maybe it's not such a crazy idea, but I'm not convinced we know how to sustain humans out there.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Interesting thing after I wrote this article is just all the not exactly hate mail, but the response, and it's very bifurcated. People who say we shouldn't be doing any of this, we should look after the earth, we should stay put. And then there are people who are completely gung, sure, yeah. And I find myself flipping back and forth between those two things myself, which tells me there's probably some way to make a compromise, there's some mutually beneficial thing here, but we haven't quite put our finger on it yet. But the perception of the Promars hobby is interesting. I think people, maybe they've seen movies or Matt Damon hanging out there making potatoes. It makes it look bad, but not so bad. But, you know, Mars is horrible. Mars is an awful place. I mean, I say to people, imagine, I told you you have to live on the top of Everest for the rest of your life. Here's a little pod.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, yeah, with oxygen. You'd have to do a lot to keep yourself going. Is there anywhere better than Mars? Perhaps not, but that's not saying much, right? I mean, Earth is really the place in this particular planetary system. It's not just the place that gave rise to us, which means that we're perfectly well adapted to because we have to be. It really has an environment that doesn't exist anywhere else on the planet. And Mars...”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Better than being, yeah, that's kind of, I see that as the tourist poster, it's Ben Miles, it's better than Venus. Right, okay. You know, Venus has an extraordinarily thick atmosphere. The temperature on the surface will melt lead. It's nasty, nasty. You could live perhaps in the atmosphere of Venus. That's a whole different ballgame. Meaning in floating platforms. So at a certain altitude in the Venusian atmosphere, it's actually like feel like being in this room, except you couldn't breathe the atmosphere. And so there's been some talk about putting floating habitats in the atmosphere of Venus.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, so it's kind of interesting. I think part of the reason is sort of historical We've thought about Mars for a very long time. It goes back to the fantasies about canals on Mars and all this kind of stuff. It's better than Venus for humans.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Doing not that much because they've got to constantly monitor their radiation levels and then there's exposure to Martian dust and all this kind of stuff. So that's the other piece of it I wonder about and I'm sure others have thought about this. What do you do? What does that million people? Is their life totally devoted to growing alfalfa in the hydroponic garden and growing beans? You know, looking after their health, or do they do something else? Do you create an economy? Do you create a full society? How does this work? But then you get into speculation about, well, are you going to create a dependent society on Mars? Are they going to be so dependent on Earth? And I don't think we know the answer to that, whether you can create a totally self-sustaining, independent... Safe place on Mars for any number of people.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, yeah. So any exposure for people. So maybe this has to be more automated somehow and so on. That feels like a lot of development. It's a lot of R&D that would have to be done if you're going to go that route. But we do think there are these natural environments that you could go to. The flip side to that is thinking longer term, maybe that's what you have to do right on Mars. And you kind of ask yourself really a million people in a cave on Mars for the rest of their natural lives. Right. Wouldn't you rather be?”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And all of those could provide fantastic habitats, but they're big and they would require significant engineering to obviously make them habitable. You might just plop your habitats inside them, but you have to get in there, right? You have to get down there. And unless you're taking heavy lifting equipment with you to Mars and diggers and JCBs and all this caterpillars and so on.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and it's kind of amusing to me. Elon Musk obviously had the boring company, and you kind of think, hmm, I wonder if he's thinking about... Drilling tunnels on bus putting a lot of material between you and the rest of the universe is a good way to do this. So we think from data obtained from the Curiosity rover on Mars that has radiation monitors suggests that if you had about three meters of rock between you and open air, you'd probably block off pretty much everything. You could bring the radiation environment down to a sustainable level that shouldn't cause any undue problems. Now, on Mars, there are actually natural environments that could provide that kind of habitat. So there were caves. We think, and lava tubes.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I think the challenge for people's long-term stay on Mars is just that, the long term. We just don't know. So yeah, you could do better job at shielding yourself, be much more careful about certainly shielding your head, really keeping track every time you get exposed, you're monitoring that in detail. It may also be that there are drugs that can be developed that help with this, cleaning up some of the free radical compounds that get produced in your cells because of radiation damage and so on. There may be certain therapies that could be developed. But my understanding of that is it's pretty early days. We don't have a magic pilt that you can draw intake when you get to Mars.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, yeah, you could really improve shielding, right? Do a lot more to shield yourself, wear simiter constantly, constantly monitor the radiation levels that you're getting exposed to. We do have data, obviously, on the earth of how much you can kind of survive on Earth from people working in the nuclear industry, astronauts as well. Whenever there's a nuclear disaster, that gives new data. And humans are resilient up to a point.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's hard to tell with the mice, but yeah, the cognitive abilities seem to be impaired. So the ability to function in an efficient and baseline normal way were definitely impaired. So I guess you could say that was getting dumbed down to some extent.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it's still controversial. I have to be clear about that. There have been a number of studies done on it, but not as many as we probably need to do. The most recent one, as I mentioned, tried to do a more realistic job at setting the kind of radiation environment and seeing what it would do to you. The bottom line is this radiation, it comes into your body, it'll crash into an atomic nucleus somewhere inside you and it will damage molecules. So it basically starts breaking up molecules and it looks”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It can actually put you at more risk than not having a shield. It's kind of strange. Yeah, if you didn't have a shield, some of that radiation would just zip through you and perhaps not really do anything. So it's a complicated equation. You have to balance out how much shielding do I need, what do I make the shielding out of. That also impacts the severity of that secondary radiation. But things like the neutron radiation, as I mentioned, have been shown, we think, to cause neurological damage.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A spray of secondary radiation so they will release things like neutrons and gamma rays. But that will happen deep inside your shield or deep inside you. And some of that kind of radiation.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's say you stay on Miles for two years. We actually have no idea what that's going to do to you. So there's the radiation challenges, there's this peculiar lower gravity. It's not zero G, but it's also not Earth normal. It's roughly a third of the force. So we don't know what that does to you. The radiation environment is not just stronger, it's different. There's a different mix of particle radiation, some of which is very, very damaging and is hard to shield against. In fact, if you put a shield around yourself, you encourage a certain amount of radiation damage. Well, these high energy cosmic rays, these are particles that come from the rest of the galaxy. Some of them come from supernova or colliding neutron stars. They have so much energy that they will penetrate through a shield, but then eventually they'll interact with something. When they interact, they don't just stop.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And obviously, there are all sorts of psychological issues because you really, you know, you're out there, right? You're not just orbiting the Earth. But then the idea of long-term environments, for example on Mars.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely, premature cataracts. Yeah, much higher incidence of cataracts. But then there are questions about, so for example, there's a recent study on vision. There's some evidence that vision gets compromised for astronauts in low gravity and so on. But those are all still comparatively short term. I mean, the longest anyone's really been up in space is not that long. It's maybe a year or I think some of the Russians have been up for more than a year. But a lot of that time and space is also cumulative. So these are astronauts who've been up for months or two. They come back. They go back again and so on. What we don't have a good idea on is both the environment that astronauts are exposed to en route to Mars. So that may be a six month journey, which isn't too bad, but it's also a different radiation environment.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“By coming back to Earth, yeah, the biggest impact generally studied is that of the low gravity environment. Now, radiation is an issue. My understanding of the statistics is that, for example, during the Apollo era, there was a much higher incidence of cataracts later on for these astronauts, and that's radiation damage. And that seems to be a direct causal connection that if you spend enough time in space, you'll get cataracts, and you're going to obviously have to deal with that, which is not an enormous challenge these days, but nonetheless gives you a sense of the direct impact on catastrophes.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Correct, well, one stayed on earth and the other went up for a year, and they were carefully monitored ahead of time and afterwards. So it was kind of the closest you could get to cloning yourself and making a comparison study. So it's a really fantastic experiment. And that's still being analyzed. The results of that are still being dissected and poured through. It's clear that there are really immediate short-term effects of going into space that are...”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So there's a variety of things. There's clearly short term impacts. You go into low gravity, so the sort of environment you'd experience en route to Mars, unless you spin things up, spin spacecraft up to make some sort of artificial gravity, you're going to be subject to micro G physiologically that's super problematic. You immediately start losing bone density. That also can compromise your kidneys because your kidneys have to flush all that calcium out of your body. There are cardiovascular changes. There are body chemistry changes, your microbiome shifts almost immediate epigenetic responses to being in space. I mean, the twin experiment that was done with the Kelly brothers demonstrated this as well. There's immediate so-called epigenetic response, which means the way that your gene state”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Going to learn ways to mitigate some of the risks. Over time. Over time. But it's going to be, I think that's a kind of new frontier where private industry is putting people's lives literally on the line in a way that is more explicit than sending them down a coal mine or something like that.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just don't know. We just don't know. And so I think the place where I get nervous is the pace at which someone like Elon Musk is talking about doing this. It's super ambitious, right? It sounds great. It's real Silicon Valley stuff. We're going to transform the world in two decades. Obviously, they know that it's going to be challenging. They're scientists, engineers know this, but it's going to come down to what's the strategy. Do you put a few experiments out there? Those experiments are people. And this is something the government and NASA have thought about for a long time. They have an extraordinary wealth of data on human activity in space, and they have very strict rules about what you can and can't do to mitigate risk. But for something like Mars, it is such an unknown in many respects that you're going to have to do experiments that are probably going to be fatalities. You're going to learn a lot from that. And you're probably...”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We just don't know. We can hazard a guess. We can use what we have in terms of astronaut exposure on the space station. We can use what we have in terms of what happened to the Apollo astronauts. And we do have ground truth data on Mars, right? We have rovers, we have probes. So we have some idea of the surface environment in greater detail than we used to.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Consent. So the difficulty is we haven't done the experiment before. And I think a good parallel is looking back at the development of Space launch systems in the first place. Each one is an experiment. And we've had experiments going on since the 1950s basically of launching stuff. And what SpaceX and others have done at this point is based off of all of that experimental data. But now we're kind of transitioning, we're going across a front.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It feels like we're really on the cusp of being able to do that, driven largely by SpaceX. The really tricky question is, what state are people going to be in when they arrive at Mars? We can kind of guess at that. We know there's going to be some radiation damage. There are some kind of scary pieces of evidence that there's neurological damage with particular types of radiation. There's been work done recently just last year, Colorado State University did a study admittedly using mice, but mimicking as closely as they could the kind of low-level neutron radiation you might receive both en route to Mars and on the surface of Mars. And they found quite extensive neurological changes in the mice. Now, that doesn't necessarily translate to humans, but it's a concern, and this is why I wrote the thing about the kind of cheeky statement you're going to be either dead or stupid or both on Mars. But it is a real...”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Environment suitable for us. So can we get stuff to Mars? I think we're on the cusp of doing that. I mean, we can take small things already. NASA does that. Can we get big things and can we get people to actually arrive at Mars?”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it could be, conceivably, partly because a lot of work has been done over the decades in terms of thinking about how you would accomplish this, how you would get humans to Mars, even just small groups of humans. So a lot of the legwork has been done in terms of the theory. I think the real hurdle comes with the unknowns. So this comes back to what I wrote about in the article, the things that are potentially very detrimental to humans on Mars. So there's the radiation environment, there's the gravity, there are things about the surface chemistry on Mars, the dust on Mars is probably really nasty stuff. You don't want to get it inside of you. And then there are these longer-term questions about what a human really needs to survive. Do we need to bring along all of our microbes? Do we need to bring along our potted plants and stuff like that just to make the...”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Simultaneously at Cape Connect. So let's talk a little bit about then this idea that Elon keeps pointing out that we're going to be living on Mars. And I think it's probes in 2020 or we're starting to build the stuff in 2020 and then living there in 2050. Do you think this is a realistic schedule?”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, absolutely. Watching what SpaceX is doing, I mean, when you see the boosters returning and landing simultaneously at Cape Canaveral, it's kind of like science fiction. Even I feel like it's science fiction. They've definitely been the most aggressive and they've made the most progress. I mean, they're already resupplying the space station. So they have government contracts. They're kind of a long way away into it. And we saw just recently they did the emergency test for the Falcon for the crude system and so on. So they're clearly getting awfully close to putting humans, at least into low Earth orbit.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. And so then leaves us with Elon Musk, who's, I think, the center of a lot of this with SpaceX, which has done the most aggressive stuff and talked most publicly about this idea of living on Mars.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that I find they too have actually been quite good about offering opportunities to put science payloads up in modest scale things. I think the issue is perhaps that they're not at this point aiming for orbital. Vehicles, right? It's still sub orbital, it's still very much space tourism, it's the public focus. There too, I think cautious optimism from scientists. We like to see all of this happening. On a personal level, I grew up thinking about space and so on. I ended up being scientists doing this stuff. And it has been enormously frustrating to feel that we sort of let go of a bunch of things after the Apollo era and so on. I understand why, but we did let go of a lot of stuff.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Somewhat behind at this point, at least in terms of their capacity to put stuff into space. I mean, they're still doing essentially suborbital work. Having said that, they clearly have a blueprint in mind. They have plans to go much bigger. It'll be fascinating to see if they kind of catch up and the different strategy that they follow. I mean, they are following a somewhat different strategy already with this focus on suborbital flights ahead of doing the full orbital work.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So Blue Origins feels a little more secretive. I mean, I think it is more secretive. So we only kind of see Jeff Bezos's. Yeah. So we only kind of see bits and pieces. It feels that then...”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Surprising that people who otherwise presumably have to be careful Will lurch off in these directions. I hate to say it, there's definitely ego involved. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, there's definitely ego.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think. Can be problematic if someone has a big idea, they've got money, they just chase down that very narrow corridor. Is that the right thing to do? I'm not sure. It's always kind of curious to me because these are people who presumably are pretty good about thinking about how to hedge their bets. And yet, at the same time, they seem to be prone to lurching off in a very specific direction. Okay, sometimes they'll accomplish great things, other times you can crash and burn. I think government tends to be actually better at hedging its bets in many respects because there's this sense of absolute responsibility. There's this taxpayer money. This is a large fraction, well, a fraction of GDP that you're putting into these things that not necessarily everyone is interested in. So yeah, I think it's really fascinating to see it play out.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Spending the amount of the expiration and the launch vehicles and the launch systems they're producing will ease the way to putting science up. I mean, if you can put something in space for less money, the odds are greater that you'll be able to do it.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A lot of discussion recently by astronomers saying, well, these things flying around in the sky are actually problematic for doing astronomy because they get in the way. They streak across your images. And there's a lot of debate about that. But we've been encouraged that SpaceX responds to that, talking about, I think they've already put up one test, Starlink, which is kind of...”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is relatively new. I think for the scientific community, we're cautiously optimistic that it will be useful for us. I mean, I think everyone's been very encouraged, both SpaceX and Blue Origins are actually really good about interacting with the science community. Blue Origins, for example, will take out payloads for their suborbital flights that all science payloads, and so they're working with the academic community, they're working with students, so students can run projects in low gravity situations and so on. And of course, SpaceX is launching not just commercial stuff, but it's launching stuff for NASA and so on. Some of that comes from, for example, one of the things SpaceX is doing is launching the Starlink satellites to make an internet system from space. And we know that there's been”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You can't get too close. I forget the precise details of the distance, but it's within a few tens of millions of kilometers, I believe. But even so, you need an enormous shield. So this spacecraft has a big shield that keeps pointed at the sun all the time to protect it from the thermal environment. And it kind of peeks around the sides to do the science. Really remarkable.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“More and more solar system exploration. I mean, I think people forget just how much stuff is going on in the solar system at the moment. NASA doesn't just have probes at Mars. I mean, it's got things orbiting Mars. It's got things on the ground. It's got missions heading out to comets and asteroids. It's got plans afoot to go back to look at the moons of Jupiter. There is a spacecraft orbiting Jupiter at the moment, Juno taking images. There's a mission to the Sun right now, the solar parker probe is this extraordinary mission to get as close to a star as we might ever get. It's in process.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that's a good question. I think for people working within NASA and with NASA, we still see the glory. There's extraordinary stuff being done there, extraordinary amounts of science. I think the focus has shifted somewhat more to science. And of course, in recent years, NASA's observatories, its Earth sensing systems, its theoretical modeling work has Spend a lot of time focused on the earth. NASA's kind of been at the forefront of understanding what's happening to Earth right now because of human activity. And that's become a really important part of their mission. I think it always was to some extent. That's always kind of been their mandate. That's played a much bigger role. But I think also the rise of things like exoplanetary science.”
2020-02-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Caleb Scharf · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT