Hey everybody! Welcome to The Planetary
Society. We're doing a Facebook Live
today talking about solar sailing--how
you can sail around the cosmos with the
light of the Sun. And with us to talk
about this subject is our CEO Bill Nye
the Science Guy.
Greetings, everyone. Thank
You, Danielle. It's great to see you all.
Wait, I can't really see you.
That's a little dramatic solar sail model flying through
space.
yes I'm Danielle Gunn, I'm Communications
Manager here and we're going to be doing
some fun stuff talking about solar
sailing. We'll have some special guests
and some giveaways. So you can brush up
on your LightSail 2 knowledge at sail.planetary.org right now. We have some
really fun things we'll give away in a
moment with some trivia questions. So
first of all, if you're sitting here
logged in wondering what is solar
sailing exactly... what is solar sailing, Bill?
Danielle Gunn, so let me
say, everybody, before we get
too far along here: I know we have this
enormous hurricane coming ashore at Cape
Canaveral in Florida here in the United
States and we had another very serious
storm two weeks ago in Houston, Texas,
and, you know, you've heard the expression,
"Houston, we have a problem." Houston is a
very important space management, space
community, NASA Center, and there's a very
important one in South Florida and I say
south because the whole idea when you
get in orbit is to get the Earth's spin
to help you when you're going around the
Earth, around the equator. The way the
International Space Station does and
that's the way we flew LightSail 1
and we're going to fly LightSail 2 and
our hearts go out to you
guys. We are very supportive. If we can
help, let us know. But I know when
you put us you put a launch facility
close to the equator near the southern part of the
North Atlantic things happen. So about
solar sails.
Yes.
There is so much going on in the world. There is so much going on.
Right, with the fires, we have Bangladesh.
Oh yeah, so if you're out here out
west in North America in the United
States, the whole place is on fire. We got a fire here, you may have heard
the expression, 'beautiful downtown
Burbank," we had a fire right next to the
Burbank Airport. I mean it's just...
and then Montana's on fire there's a lot
going on that is almost certainly
associated with a bigger phenomenon but
that aside. That aside.
We're talking about solar sailing today because
space brings out the best in us.
Here we go, this is video of us
watching LightSail 1 take off and we
are at Cape Canaveral in Florida.
There is no hurricane coming ashore
during this video.
And there I am being hilarious.
And there's Carl Sagan, one of
my old professors, talking about solar
sailing in 1976. Then we managed
to fly LightSail 1 in 2015,
and with your help we're gonna fly LightSail 2, which is ten times this size.
This is a one-tenth model, ten times this size
And the idea, you guys, even though light
has no mass, its photons have momentum
and so they will give this spacecraft to
push, it's just amazing. If you can
build a spacecraft that's low enough
mass, light enough weight, you're on Earth
and get it spread out enough, it gets a
push from sunlight. And then by making it
shiny, this part is cool, this is just
regular, so-called basic physics, but
if you can make it shiny the photons hit
it and bounce off which, theoretically, if
it were perfectly reflective, if it
were a perfect reflector, would be
exactly twice as much momentum
than if it were black. So the crinkles
and wrinkles, which are susceptible to
analysis, people mathematically analyze
the difference between wrinkles and
crinkles. Don't come running to me, it's
not perfectly flat. Anyway, the idea is we
can send this thing through space and
our mission at The Planetary Society
is to advance space science and
exploration, and we do that with your
help. We are the world's largest
non-governmental space interest
organization. I mean, by a large
factor, several multiples. We are the
largest space interest organization. So
if you want to do something about space
exploration, check us out at planetary.org
And what we do is we educate, we
advocate. We have three full-time policy
analysts that make relationships, especially with NASA in the United
States, but also to a lesser extent with
Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency,
Chinese Space Administration, and
European Space Agency and
Canada, Canadian Space Agency. And we try to, we do, influence policymakers to
support space exploration and I'll give
you an example. Two examples. I was in a
Senator Barbara Mikulski's office in the
year 2001, which was some time ago, Danielle,
I don't know if you even remember such a thing.
No, I was there. I know, I kid because
I love. Anyway, and we
took 10,000 postcards, for you younger
viewers, a postcard was a--
It's not mylar, it's like a--
like postcard. Yes paper! All right that's
the word, yeah, plant-based plant-based
information storage system. No, we took
10,000 postcards to Barbara Mikulski's
office in favor of the Pluto mission
which back then was called
Pluto 360, it got renamed to New
Horizons,
and thanks to you all it flew and it
went by Pluto and summer of 2015.
Extraordinary world-changing thing
because Pluto is not just a white disc,
it's this amazing place with at least
seven geological regions.
Let me ask our audience something.
If you're watching this right now in the comments section, if you're a Planetary Society
member I'd be really curious, we'd both
be, to say hi to us and let everybody
know that you are a member. And on the
topic of LightSail we actually have a
really cool opportunity today, Bill.
Oh, we do?
We do!
We had a few
generous Planetary Society members
donate a $5,000 matching gift, so they're
saying that if we can raise $5,000
through the Facebook Live that they will
match it dollar for dollar, meaning we'll
get $10,000 for LightSail, so that's the
cool thing about this spacecraft--the
much bigger version of it-- it's ten times that
size, is that it's citizen funded. This is
people coming together to make something
go into space and make history because
it is going to do the first controlled
solar sailing flight of a CubeSat. We can
go into what a CubeSat is in a moment.
But the important thing is that you can
actually be involved. You can join Bill
and me and all of us here at The
Planetary Society, Carl if he shows back
up he founded this place. 
That would be surprising.
It was a dream of his and our co-founders Louis
Friedman and Bruce Murray to do solar
sailing and so you can be a part. The
address is planetary.org/launchpad,
but if you supported the Planetary
Society in the past or LightSail itself
say hi in the comments to show people
that we're out there. So we have this
thing scheduled, you know, I know that the
weather is on everybody's mind but life
goes on and we will go back to Cape
Canaveral and we will launch we're going to on the second Falcon Heavy rocket so
for those of you scoring along with us
who doesn't love the Falcon 9? So they
launched one this morning, SpaceX
launched one this morning and it landed,
the first stage, successfully again.
Really amazing.
They're on a roll, they're on a fly, they're
on a zoom. They're required by rule
to fly once Falcon Heavy on its own
without any expensive payload on board,
but we are on the first commercial one
the first payload carrying one so to
give you this idea how many... hey viewers!
How many engines does the Falcon 9 have?
I got to go find out if they have the right answer.
Anyway, it has nine engines. The Falcon Heavy is three Falcon 9's strapped together as
27 engines and so it hasn't flown yet
but they're building at least
four of them right now.
And we are very hopeful that it'll be a
total success and we will fly within a
year. Bill, do we have a LightSail model
around that we could just see in person,
maybe someone that's an expert. Oh, you mean
some engineering parts that have been
the assembled to actual size.
And if program manager was here of the
LightSail mission.
The program manager of the LightSail mission?
Yeah, that one.
The guy who got his PhD at Caltech under Dr.
Bruce Betts--doggone it! Under Dr. Bruce Murray!
We'll stop, let's just go see here's
Dr. Betts, right here.
Woo, alright, whoa.
Hello.
Hi Bruce.
Hi Danielle.
How's it going?
Good.
So, what are looking at we're looking at?
We're looking at an engineering model of the LightSail spacecraft--LightSail 1, LightSail 2.
As you can see it's about the size of a
loaf of bread but out of this comes 32
square meters of the Mylar material
we've talked about, forming a sail. These
solar panels pop up all four of them
yeah
These come out and then in this big open
space here we would actually have the
sail, four sail triangles, each in the four
different sides of the spacecraft. We
also have a DVD flying to space with
selfies of space
That's right we took selfies.
This is the engineering model of our baby. So what's going on with LightSail 2. We did
LightSail 1 was the test mission and that's the one that Bill was talking about, we launched
from Cape Canaveral and that was just to
release it into space and make sure it
deployed, correct? 
That was to test
everything up through sail deployment
and including sail deployment so we
wanted to, we went to a lower orbit than
you would be able to actually solar sail
because light pressure is one push but
then there's atmospheric drag,
particularly when you have a little
spacecraft and a big sail, even when you
think there's not a lot of atmosphere
there they're still they're still is. So,
we got a launch opportunity and we decided
to take it and fly one of these and we
tested the computer systems, the
communications, etc, and we learned a lot
from it. We got a successful deployment,
we got a successful image, but we had a
lot of glitchy things and that's why you
fly test missions. So we've come back,
made modifications to the spacecraft
since then, we have tested them, we've
learned from the testing, we've made more
modifications and as the launch has
been delayed and slipped, we've used that
as an opportunity to really test out the
spacecraft and make modifications both
with the hardware and the software.
And that's what is interesting
about this, there's still an opportunity to be
part of the mission team by donating.
Here's the--if you can get all of that--thanks, Bill.
You can donate there and again today
we're doing--actually it's throughout the
week--whoever can watch this Facebook Live and wants to donate, a couple of
generous Planetary Society members gave
us $5,000 and we said we'll do it on
Facebook Live since it's a new platform
for us to speak directly to you about
all of this stuff and you'll be matched
dollar for dollar and you get to be part
of mission team
and say that you helped put a spacecraft
in to space.  
It's just romantic, it's sailing on light. So when I was in
astronomy class back in the disco era
Carl Sagan talked about this this
romantic idea but it took us 39 years to
get the spacecraft funded, the big
expense Dr. Betts, verify this, is
getting it tested, right? 
There are a lot
of big expenses but getting it tested is
one of the big ones.
You have to shake it.
You shake it. You bake it.
Julienned fries?
Deep fry it.
No but you do shake it to simulate the rocket launch, the
vibrations. We test the deployment, we
test the communication system, and as I
said, from those we learn things and we
make improvements and make for a better
spacecraft, reliable spacecraft.
So, if we said the Florida ceiling here at The
Planetary Society is what is that 3 plus
meters this thing, if you can see, imagine
this is a square it's probably eight
times that big right the sail that comes
out of this little box is huge. It's huge.
I can challenge our Merc with the camera
and about from this wall to that wall is
what our sail.
Bill's floating.
Hey, let's float over to see people's questions.
If everybody wants to say hi to Bill and Bruce and me, but mostly Bill. If you want to say hi to him.
I noticed a couple of people got 9 engines right. 
Oh good.
So here's a question, if you could sail anywhere in the cosmos,
where would you take a solar sail. 
Well for me the whole
idea or the current idea in solar
sailing is to lower the cost of going
anywhere and so for us at The Planetary
Society we think mostly, not entirely, but
mostly about our solar system and what I
would like to do is use solar sails to
ferry cargo to Venus, Mars, Jupiter,
Saturn, places like that because it
doesn't need any rocket fuel, once you're
on orbit, as the saying goes, it just
sunlight pushes you along. The whole thing
everybody has been with solar sails,
it's a niche. Solar sails are not made--
they don't they don't send people to the
Moon in time for the Cold War, it was a
different era with different objectives.
This is to democratize space to enable so many organizations at universities
and people around the world who want to
do interplanetary missions to enable
them to do it because they don't to buy
fuel. Dr. B? We've got these CubeSats
that have become very standardized,
allowed universities from now agencies
to fly these small spacecraft to
piggyback them on various launches but
what they have lacked is a good
propulsion technique for deep space so
they did great in the Earth orbit but
it's trickier to figure out how to how
to mosey around the solar system. I want
to add one other thing that
solar sails also have some to some
particular mission
they would be very good. For example
solar monitoring putting between them
between the Earth and the Sun and
because they have a constant
acceleration you can actually put them
closer a little bit farther in get a
little more warning of solar storms by
I wonder if we talked about this, Andrew Planet
Andrew Planet, that's a cool last name:
is it possible to steer the LightSail?
Yes yes yes yes, so the idea
in the little CubeSat box
are these momentum wheels, so the old
word the word that I grew up using was
gyro, gyroscope, but what's happened in
engineering usage the word gyroscope is
almost always referring to a gyro that's
used for navigation but the momentum
wheel is used to provide momentum twist
to the space cuffs so the premise of the
bit here we got to go over here okay
Danielle, you're the Sun okay so
here's the idea. We will choose the Earth
I'm the Earth yeah 
We have an Earth
this is The Planetary Society, we have an Earth around here somewhere. Can he be the Earth?
He's blue yes. Danielle, you're the Sun okay
okay well you get you're far away you're
far away so what we do is we will sail
edge-on toward the Sun then with the
momentum wheels on board and there's no
shortage of electricity for our solar
sails for our spacecraft because we have
solar panels on the bus on the cube
itself and they just get they soak up
all the sunlight we need and so that
powers an electric motor which provides
the momentum wheel with torque with
twist we go toward the Sun then we will
twist and Danielle's sun rays will push
back around Dr. Betts the Earth and then
we will twist again like we did last
orbit twist again so then we'll go like
this and the idea is so similar it's so
perfectly analogous to sailing a
sailboat but it's not in the ocean on
Earth it's in the cosmic ocean and that
idea of the cosmic ocean of the cosmos
as a vast trackless expanse that we can
navigate is is romantic and it
thoroughly charmed my old professor Carl
Sagan and the other founders the Society
Bruce Murray and Lou Friedman. Bee-tee-dubs, as the kids say,
by the way Bruce Murray in the 1960s was
a young PhD guy working with NASA on
exploring Mars he was a planetary
geologist explored Mars and he is
generally credited with insisting that
spacecraft carry cameras at first in the
1960s people thought while cameras this
can be a publicity thing that's just
that's for the public there's no science
there that's it but he said no there's
science there furthermore if it engages
the public isn't that a good thing so
can you all imagine a space program
without pictures who would even care who
would even show up so we at the
planetary say are very proud that Carl
Sagan and Bruce Murray helped found them
and we have a Bruce Murray Space Image
Library where we put lots of beautiful
pictures of space yeah we named our
image library after him.
So let's do some giveaway so here's what we got for you
guys let's walk over here gentlemen you
get to be included sir we have LightSail
Can you see this, Merc? I feel like one of those makeup videos on Instagram like here's my
mascara.
Okay here's your patch I don't watch a lot
well I do can't you tell?
Okay, patch sticker and a pin and so
we're gonna give these away right now
and see if you guys have been paying
attention and do some trivia so who
wants that you can you can select a
trivia question so put your answer in
the comments and we'll try to do one of
the first we can't guarantee and
actually I will see if I can catch you
guys on here in real time and then bill
will sign a sticker for you guys and
we'll mail it to you so you will need to
direct message us if you're the winner
okay what's the question the question is
what was the name of the Planetary
Society's first attempt at a solar sails
spacecraft which was lost due to rocket
failure okay let's see if we've got any
answers I'm looking so if you guys
haven't going to read it again while
people try to answer what was the name
of the planetary society's first attempt
at a solar sail spacecraft lost
unfortunately due to rocket failure. Oh
what do we got correct
Art Krull, Cosmos 1. Yes, Art Krull. Cosmos 1 yes sign this, say Dear Art from
Bill Nye, and Art if you could direct
message us right now in our Planetary
Society page we will mail this off to
you.
So we'll see ...The Sagan I'm Stephen
Khaled Stephen Calvanese.
Robert Krulpa, nice work, Art.
See we're all in this together we're
all gonna try to win these trivia
questions okay let's do another one
oh yeah oh wait an art you can have
Bill's pin I have one oh use the pin
that's yours art times are cool bill is
where you know it's very traditional
everybody to have a mission patch this
is true of virtually run through of
every space mission that's launched in
english-speaking countries everybody has
a mission patch so the sticker and the
patch and the pin are all the same
graphics and we're really proud of them
it's a thing it brings us together
face exploration brings out the best in
us and because we work together to solve
problems that have never been solved
before and the mission patch for me is
part of that bringing all the
disciplines together it's it's it's it
means a lot to me so we've only got a
couple of these patches to give away but
here's what I will tell you if you share
this video
between now and the end tomorrow 5:00
p.m. Pacific we'll put the details in
the comments but if you can share it if
you share this video you will be entered
to win a very cool grand prize that Bill
will sign for you and it's either if
you're watching right now live or if
you're watching later by the end of
tomorrow Friday we will pull the winner
so this they went on itself spacecraft
they do win you want to see it okay
here's no no you don't want a paper
model that actually cool yeah
John Jogurst designed this and Tom Kemp
put it together they are a member
volunteers and so bill will sign this
for you and Bruce - I think you should
your signatures should be on there as
the program manager admission yeah so
you'll get this if you share alright
ready for more trivia I'll say I mean we
don't consider this trivial no really as
you said with Bruce Murray and some
motivation how many cameras does a light
sail spacecraft have onboard
how many camera cameras not that many
Danielle kids thank you for sharing
David and Phillip and Christopher Howse says bowties are cool they are cool yeah
and they are cool this is a Planetary
Society bowtie you can from Nick Graham.
We have the answer Scarlett Banes -
Bing Bing Bing Bing Mat Kaplan what is
he doing?
Is he on here?
The host of Planetary Radio our podcast is trying to win now
you got it right so Bill this is going
to scarlet that's how many teams they
Scarlett Banes answered the
question correctly we're not going to
give that away our regional models not
actual cameras but is this deploys two
of the to these opposite panels have
cameras on there they can cool scarlet
you can have my pin so we'll mail this
to you we're all wearing one and there's
your sticker and we'll mail this to you
so please direct message us on Planetary
Society Facebook page and we'll get your
mailing address end send this to you
okay so we let's do one more
sure I'll pick one what rocket will
LightSail 2 launch on all right well
if you were tuned in earlier I'm very
hopeful what rocket will LightSail 2
launch on very hopeful. Thanks for your
support you guys you know I I'm a
Charter Member which it will be looked
me up I joined in 1980 and when I got a
letter in the mail from Carl Sagan and
because I was an alumnus of the Cornell
where he taught and I guess all of us
got letters in the mail to join I joined
1980 I've been a member ever since and
then seven years ago what day is today
of September 8 no 7 tomorrow is my 7
year anniversary as the CEO
the chief executive officer for seven
years and really I'm not kidding
everyone it has flown by pun intended it
has gone so fast it's been such an honor
to represent you and represent the
larger spacefaring peace-loving
community to governments around the
world to promote space exploration to
educate people generally about space we
just had a big time at the solar eclipse
and if you read our blogs there's quite
a bit there about Cassini which is the
mission that was launched back in the
20th century and will now be
purposefully crash-landed in the surface
ish area of the gas giant Saturn and to
fly our own hardware to fly our own
spacecraft is all too thanks to you guys
so thank you very much it is an honor to
serve. Bill, you're the greatest boss ever.
Thanks, Bruce. The answer to the question
of when will what rocket will light so
to launch on was the Falcon Heavy SpaceX
rocket David Maines, you all the winner
sir. and go I'm going to grab this bill
will sign it for you. Dear David.
Alright and you can have Bruce's pin
that we will mail to you along with the
patch. Here we go okay so again if
you share this video you will enter to
win a really cool grand prize where we
have a LightSail model that Bill and
Bruce will sign for you and that's if
you're watching this now live or if
you're watching it anytime before Friday
the 8th. Thank you, David. And the other thing I want
to throw out to you guys is you can be
part of this mission this is a citizen
funded spacecraft it's all donations
from people like me and them and all
it's just us it's us and we're doing it
and this is a moment where we can make
space exploration history and so you can
go to planetary.org/launchpad to
donate to this mission we
some generous donors give a $5,000
matching challenge so if you donate
today or anytime this week you'll get a
dollar for dollar match so we'll get
$10,000 which should be huge I think
we're out of pins to give away to people
unless someone else around here happens
to have one okay well is this what you
mean here Robert Picardo Star Trek
Voyager what are you doing here and the
planetary post well that's why I'm here
I'm here to shoot a new Planetary Post
in just a few minutes as soon as you
free up my camera operator, Merc.
I have a mission patch it's traditional to
have a mission patch when you have a
wonderful mission like LightSail and I
will surrender my mission patch to the
next winner may I pick you should patch
pin do I get to pick the doctor is in
all right the doctor is in the doctor's
putting on this emergency holographic
glasses let me be good to see what the heck he's reading all right what common food
product is about the size of a light
sail spacecraft before deployment of its
panels or sails that is a good question
what common food
prana is about the size of light sail
spacecraft before deployment of its
panels or sails Oh pizza that's not very
no pizza would not be right that's a
different space sandwich yeah oh I see
it Tom Hogan a loaf of bread all right
Tom we'll get everyone to sign your butt
you guys please please say you know we'd
be nothing without you all right Tom
this is fun you guys so again grand
prize let me grab it again in case you
didn't wait anything there's still a
chance I'm saying there's still a chance
so right here this is a paper model
designed and built by our volunteers
they're fun and we've got multiple sides
so all all these fellas here could sign
it for you if all you have to do is
share
the video and you'll be entered to win
they're fun they're fun and we're all
about fun no but we're advancing space
science and exploration thanks to your
support and so we appreciate you
watching this Facebook live as we
prepare for our next launch which will
be from Cape Canaveral and we wish
everybody in the Florida area and
Houston area the best as we weather this
heavy weather it's men's serious
business I remember being in Florida in
1993 shortly
early in 1993 shortly after Hurricane
Andrew had come through there and man
it's serious business we hope to do
better this time so good luck everybody
in the Space Coast so before we go again
I want to throw a a shout to
planetary.org/launchpad we'll put it in the
comments share this video to enter the
win the final prize and I have a
question for all of you in the audience
and then I will ask everyone here so we
pose the question you could take a solar
sail anywhere in the cosmos where would
you take it and we asked Merc who's
behind the camera we actually asked this
question to Neil deGrasse Tyson a a
buddy of yours and I believe he answered
Pluto as a way to rub it in Pluto's face
I don't know like haha I'm sailing by
you're still not a planet but, so that
was the answer so if you guys could tell
us in the answer below are inside the
comments below where you would take a
solar sail and then let's ask Bob I
probably have to say the Delta Quadrant
because I haven't been back for a while
I think and well they miss me
I'd go Mars stood at just a Mars fan
yeah Mars Mars for me I want to look for life.
My claim is that if we were to
discover life on Mars it would or
evidence of life on Mars it would change
the course of human history everybody
would think differently about what it
means to be alive in the cosmos and
along that line the other thing we
worked on, Dr. Betts
works very hard on we don't want the
earth to get hit with an impact or some
asteroid or comet from space that would
just be big trouble it's true and there
is a follow-on NASA mission that we're
collaborating with with our life sail
results called neo scout that will
actually go visit near-earth asteroids
as part of our ongoing efforts to
understand these threats and NEOScout
has solar sail appliance onboard and it
is derivative of these long years of
working to get the especially the
mechanism working but you were going to
say basically what I was gonna say is
that The Planetary Society is involved
with so many different aspects of space
and exploration and it's a way for you
as a citizen to get involved as well so
if you love space like all of us do you
can become a member of The Planetary
Society you can donate to this LightSail
mission we've talked about today
you can just follow our Facebook page or
Twitter anywhere we're at we have a
podcast we have beautiful blogs and
images stay in touch because we are
bringing the cosmos to you so we're
really glad that you could join us if
again share this video to enter to win
the final I'm not came late to the party
but my understanding is if you donate
between now and Friday your donation is
double strong yes you get it double yes
planetary.org/launchpad, it's in
the comments as well as a description of
this video but it's really cool you
could you could be part of this mission
I want to thank Merc Boyan behind the
camera mark you can wave bye to everyone
Chelsea Bell, Andrew Pauly,
Barbara Turman, Richard Chute, Erin
Greeson, Jenn Vaughan everyone here
today lots of people helped put this
together we want to do more of these
Facebook Lives so if you have any ideas
of things you'd like to see us do just
tell us in the comments and we will try
to fulfill that would you like to stop
by since I'll just hang out absolutely
totally we would love to do a Facebook
Live and don't forget the Planetary Post
right Merc yeah they're gonna go film
the Planetary Post
their monthly e-newsletters that you can
sign up for that.
When this sail gets pushed
through space there's no sound.
I think that's our way of saying bye.
Thanks, everybody! Thanks for joining.
