Prof. Charles Liu: 30- Second Space Travel was essentially
the idea that we put in the subtitle.
Key ideas, inventions, and destinations that have inspired
humanity toward the heavens.
President John F. Kennedy: We choose to go to the Moon
in this decade and do the other things.
Not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
Prof. Charles Liu: We wanted to give everyone a comprehensive
sense of what it was like from the very beginnings of
the science and technology of space travel to today and the
future when we actually are living in space as human beings.
Lisa Beth Kovetz: And this book on the major scientific
principles of space travel is a really fun read.
Allen Liu: The idea is to take these things that might
initially seem complicated, it's literally rocket science
sometimes, and to make into something that's enjoyable.
Prof. Karen Masters: It's short snippets of information.
You can read it, cover to cover if that's what you want to.
But you can really just spend a small amount of
time with the book and expect to learn something
about one of the topics.
Lisa Beth Kovetz: And you couldn't ask for a more
interesting group of 30-secing tour guides to the history
and future of space travel.
Prof. Charles Liu: Karen and I are both astrophysics
professors and we study the universe itself and how
we've gone to explore it.
Allen's expertise is actually a really neat bookend to both
of ours, where Allen knows both about the history and all the
cool old tech of space travel and rockets and so forth.
And also the frontier things; the solar sails and all the
latest kind of science fiction ideas that are being brought
to reality by modern research.
So this team is really an amalgam of a broad
spectrum of knowledge and understanding of the whole
concept of space travel.
Lisa Beth Kovetz: So let's talk about some of
the ideas in the book.
It seems that humanity began accumulating the principles
behind modern space flight a very long time ago.
And the first chapter, appropriately, is about
the first rockets.
So just how long have we humans been sending
rockets to the stars?
Allen Liu: So the very first rockets that people
at launched were in the Song dynasty in medieval China.
And they're both for military purposes,
like missiles, and for civilian purposes, like fireworks.
And so people have been dreaming about space
travel for a long time.
It really became possible in the reality in the
fifties and sixties.
Lisa Beth Kovetz: Almost the last chapter in the book is all
about the brand new non-chemical rockets we're developing now.
In 30 seconds or less can you guys tell me about ion
engines and solar sails?
Prof. Charles Liu: Ion engines, basically take a very heavy
molecule like xenon or something, accelerate to
very high speeds and shoot it out the back of your rocket.
It's very gentle acceleration.
But in space, over time, you can build up a tremendous amount of
speed and a tremendous amount of motion with very little weight.
Lisa Beth Kovetz: And it turns out solar sails are more
than just a cool scifi idea that looks good on Star Trek.
Prof. Karen Masters: The cool thing is that even
light has momentum.
And so photons of light bouncing off a mirror impart just a tiny,
tiny impulse on the spacecraft.
It's so tiny you would never even notice it on the Earth.
But in space, in the vacuum of space and over really
long periods of time, it's enough that it can
accelerate spacecraft.
Lisa Beth Kovetz: So between puttering and speed of light,
where are we in this?
Prof. Karen Masters: You would very much star puttering but
then if you did it for, or if you could figure out a way to
do it for years or decades, you could get very, very, very fast.
Lisa Beth Kovetz: For practical as well as hopeful reasons,
do you think space travel draws all Earthlings together?
Prof. Charles Liu: Yes, absolutely.
My few seconds worth on this is just think about Apollo-Soyuz.
During the Cold War, what brought America and the
Soviet Union together? It was a handshake in space.
Lisa Beth Kovetz: The book is called 30-Second Space
Travel and it is so much fun. Fun book written by fun people.
I'm sure you'll enjoy it.
This has been Lisa Beth Kovetz for Simply Science.