[slow suspenseful music]
[music mellows]
[Arthur]
It seems
absolutely inconceivable.
And I think most astronomers
today will go along with me,
that in this gigantic universe,
we are the only living things
and the only intelligent things.
It's far more probable that
there are more races ahead of us
than behind us,
and that we may be
very low indeed
in the hierarchy
of cosmic intelligence.
Ultimately, one of
the most important results
of space flight
is, I think,
going to be the contact
with superior civilizations.
- [music fades]
- [birds chirping]
[insects trilling]
[slow mysterious music]
[Gentry] I am one
of the most fortunate people
who ever lived.
You're looking at someone
who believes
he has the best job
in the world.
And it is ideally suited for me.
I cannot imagine a
better place for Gentry Lee
to work than the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory...
trying to build spacecraft to
explore the planets robotically.
I have maybe 18 to 20 projects
under my jurisdiction,
ranging from ideas
for things we're gonna do
ten years from now
to spacecraft that
have been flying for 15 years
and, and have a problem.
[indistinct radio chatter]
And I would like
to continue to do that
with the productive years
that I have left.
[slow atmospheric music]
One of the biggest
philosophical questions
that human beings
have ever faced...
is the question,
"Are we alone in the universe?"
Why is it important
whether or not there is
life on Mars or ever was?
[suspenseful music]
If we discover
life of any kind anywhere other
than on the planet Earth...
it will be the greatest
scientific discovery in history.
[tense music]
This search
is among the most profound...
of anything that human beings
have ever done.
[tense music fades]
[vehicles rumbling]
[indistinct chatter]
[commentator]
Joe DiMaggio coming to bat...
[Gentry]
I was born in New York City...
and I was fascinated
by baseball.
Somewhere between
four and five, I became
a Brooklyn Dodger fan.
[commentator]
Robinson swings...
[continues indistinctly]
[Gentry]
And I enjoyed
computing the batting averages
for all of my favorite Dodgers
every day.
- [boy] Is that
a real Major League ball?
- That sure is.
That's the best one we have.
And here's a real
Major League bat
just to go with it.
[Gentry]
And so,
in the middle of the summer,
I was out in the street...
and a man walked by
and he said...
"Excuse me.
Uh, are, are you
reciting the batting averages
of the Brooklyn Dodgers?"
I said yes.
He says,
"Well, they're not posted
until the afternoon papers."
And I said... Matter of fact,
you know,
I was a five-year-old kid.
I said, "I computed it myself."
He said, "What?"
He said,
"How did you do that?"
And I said,
"Well, you just have to
take the number of bats
and the number of hits,
and then you do the division
and you can compute
the batting average."
Well, he was freaked out.
I didn't know it at the time,
but he was a professor
at Columbia.
He went to my parents
and said, "Five-year-olds
don't compute batting averages.
Do you mind if I take your son
for some tests?"
When I was in the fifth grade
and they gave aptitude tests...
my reading level was 11th grade
and my math level
was freshman in college.
When I was in the fifth grade.
The, the teachers
and the schools
had no idea what to do with me.
[gentle music]
I caused a lot of trouble,
uh, in, in, in my youth.
I can look back now and say
it was because I was bored,
but that's just an excuse.
I was a discipline problem.
School was painful.
Home was painful.
My only escape were books.
Until junior high school.
And I go into...
an eighth grade class with,
with a woman, Bertha Casey.
[voice quavering]
I really loved that lady.
And I kept in touch with her
until after
my first novel was written.
I kept in touch with her
all the way through college...
and... I told her
that she changed my life...
because she opened the door
to it being okay...
to be not like everybody else.
[audience clapping]
[Gentry]
I remember, when Carl
was on Johnny Carson
and he talked about
when he was age 12,
he looked up at the skies
and he knew
exactly what he wanted to do.
That wasn't me at all.
Do you know what
at age 12 I wanted to be?
Anything that could
possibly be happy.
Because I wasn't.
It was baseball.
Playing baseball
and following baseball.
That stabilized me
with respect to my peers.
Now I got emotional.
I have to blow my nose.
[music fades]
[slow suspenseful music]
[Gentry]
I finished my undergraduate work
at the University of Texas
in Austin.
I decided to get
a master's degree in physics,
mathematics
and aerospace engineering
at MIT.
Kennedy had made the statement
about landing on the moon,
and Apollo was underway.
It was clear to me
from what I was reading
that what was about to happen
was the same thing with respect
to the solar system.
[crowd cheering]
Many years ago,
the great British explorer
George Mallory,
who was to die on Mount Everest,
was asked
why did he want to climb it.
He said, "Because it is there."
Well, space is there,
and we're going to climb it.
And the moon
and the planets are there.
[Gentry]
My 23-year-old mind
already grasped
that I could be part
of the only generation
that would ever explore
the solar system
for the first time.
[man]
You sense
the spirit of adventure
that stimulates
hundreds of scientists,
most of them young,
all of them bold,
as they set forth
on the great intellectual
exploration of our century...
Search for life
beyond the Earth.
[muted]
[Carl] On these other planets,
the physical conditions
are different.
The organisms that live there
will also be different.
They will,
from our point of view,
be strange,
and exotic, and bizarre.
We will search them out.
To seek
the beings of other worlds
is a rare adventure.
All mankind shares the quest.
[slow ominous music]
[slow rumbling]
[Gentry]
Once upon a time...
maybe six million years ago...
there started
being the development
on this planet...
of a species that all of us
would say had some intelligence.
And maybe 600,000 years ago...
some early
species of humanity...
looked up at the stars...
and wondered what they were...
and perhaps
thought they were
campfires in the sky.
[intriguing music]
But I believe...
the moment that
human beings understood...
that the Earth was a planet
and that there were
other planets...
the idea...
of the sphere of influence
of the human species
eventually extending
beyond the boundaries
of the planet Earth
began to develop.
Evolution...
has preserved in us
a thirst.
Perhaps it's even stronger
than that. A lust
to understand
through exploration.
Do you anticipate
that we're going to have
any discovery
of intelligent life
within the planets
in our solar system?
No. I think it's unlikely that,
as of now,
there's anything
even comparable to us
in this solar system,
in this little group of planets
around our sun.
And because,
uh, it takes even light
four years
to get to the nearest star.
We've obviously got to travel
at an appreciable fraction
of the speed of light to make
interstellar travel possible.
The curious thing is this,
that at the very moment,
when we've acquired the ability
to go out to the near planets,
we have also,
as a result of the same
technological development...
acquired the ability
to communicate with anybody
on the stars,
if there's anybody there
to listen to our signals
and to send anything back.
[slow suspenseful music]
[Frank]
This telescope you see here
is by far
the largest radio telescope
in the world.
In the near future,
when this telescope is improved
and others like it built,
we may start serious searches
for other civilizations
in space.
[Gentry]
In 1960,
an astronomer named Frank Drake
wrote down an equation
for the likely number
of intelligent civilizations
in our galaxy today.
There's a whole bunch
of variables in the equation.
But the one
that's the most important
is a philosophical one.
Perhaps there is something
about an advanced civilization
that limits
how long it survives.
[Frank]
We're seeking
the answers of those questions
every human being asks himself
at one time.
"Why am I here?
Why is there a world?"
We will never understand
these things
until we have understood
the birth and death
of the stars,
where life comes from,
what forms it can take,
what is its eventual destiny.
[mysterious music]
[thump, crackling]
[Gentry]
The universe we now know
was created in a big bang
13.81 billion years ago.
In our galaxy alone,
there are 150 billion stars.
It can be well assumed
that there may be
close to a trillion planets.
That number staggers people.
If the average lifetime
of an advanced extraterrestrial
civilization is short,
then it would explain why
we have not been contacted
in any way.
[insects trilling]
That was the question
Enrico Fermi asked,
the famous Fermi Paradox.
Enrico Fermi
was a very famous physicist,
and he once asked
the following question...
"If there are so many stars
and so many planets,
and a likelihood
that life is going to emerge,
surely whatever it was
that created us
has happened
over and over and over again.
[ominous music]
Where are they?"
Imagine that you're sitting
in a very large auditorium,
and down on the floor,
there are a million light bulbs.
And we're gonna start
winding the clock
beginning when
the universe was created.
And we're gonna run it forward.
And whenever
an extraterrestrial civilization
that is advanced emerges,
a light bulb will come on.
[crackling]
But then it dies. The light dies
in a very short period of time
compared to this
long 13.81 billion years.
Lights would come on over here.
Then a light
would come on over there.
But there would
never be two lights
close enough to each other
that endured long enough
that they would be
able to interact.
But imagine...
if just one civilization
figured out how to survive
for a long period of time.
Let's just say
as long as the dinosaurs,
which was about
100 million years.
In that case,
you would imagine another light
eventually coming on
close to that light...
and perhaps,
after a certain period of time,
there would be a group of lights
in the same region,
all of which
were able to survive.
And I don't think
it's gonna happen,
but, oh, my goodness,
I would jump with jubilation
and I would weep with joy
if there was
an unambiguous signal
received from a clearly advanced
extraterrestrial species.
[suspenseful music]
Is life everywhere?
Does it have to be
the same as us?
Or are we just one example
of a vast array
of possible kinds
of biochemistries?
Well, there's no way for us ever
to answer that question.
No way for us to determine
the generality of life on Earth,
except by, uh,
by looking for life elsewhere.
And the nearest
candidate planet is surely Mars.
[suspenseful music]
[Gentry]
When it was decided
in the late '60s
that we were going to send
a spacecraft to Mars and try
to land on the planet...
a man walked into my office
and said,
"Gentry, somebody told me
that you knew something
about interplanetary navigation.
Could you help us
with this proposal?"
Twenty-five years old,
and I got to write
part of a proposal
that would land
the first spacecraft ever
on another planet.
For the next seven years
of my life,
I lived and breathed
that mission.
[gentle music]
[Gentry]
Somewhere near 2000 people
at one time or another
worked on some major thing
associated with Viking.
[indistinct chatter]
One of those people, of course,
was Carl Sagan.
And he and I
developed a friendship.
This is one of hundreds
of little channels.
Channels which look
for all the world as if they've
been cut by running water.
[Gentry]
Hundred and fifty years ago,
an Italian named
Giovanni Schiaparelli
looked at Mars
and he announced that he saw
canali on Mars.
Now,canali is an Italian word
that means channels.
But when the word
came to the United States
and was translated,
The New York Times
and The Washington Post
both said,
"An Italian astronomer
has found canals on Mars."
And, of course, immediately,
people started thinking that,
"Wow, there must be
advanced life on Mars
if they're building canals."
[RJ 1 on radio]
We take you now
to Grovers Mill, New Jersey.
[RJ 2]Ladies and gentlemen,
I have a grave announcement
to make.
Those strange beings who landed
in the Jersey farmlands tonight
are the vanguard
of an invading army
from the planet Mars.
Ladies and gentlemen,
due to circumstances
beyond our control,
we are unable
to continue the broadcast
from Grover's Mill...
[Gentry]
Many people developed fear
of possible life on Mars.
And that can all be ascribed
to a magnificent
science fiction work
by H.G. Wells
- called The w*r of the Worlds.
- [Phillips]Good Lord,
they're turning into flame!
- [man screaming]
- [Phillips]Now the whole
field's caught fire!
The woods, the barns,
the gas tanks,
tanks of the automobiles!
It's spreading everywhere!
[tense music]
[Gentry]
That basic idea
that aliens might be hostile
has permeated
many science fiction films,
where the Earth
was invaded by Martians,
and they summarily began
to wipe us out.
[warbling, screeching]
[screaming]
[suspenseful music]
[indistinct chatter]
[Gentry]
In 1964,
a spacecraft called Mariner
flew by Mars
with a primitive camera
and took photographs.
People believed at that time
that there was
not only life on Mars,
but intelligent life on Mars.
But what they saw looked
almost exactly like the moon.
[indistinct chatter]
Well, I'll be damned.
And all of a sudden,
that probability plummeted.
[man]
Nine, eight, seven, six...
[Gentry]
On the Mariner 9 spacecraft
in 1971,
the first pictures
that came back
astonished the world.
Why? Because there was clearly
water in the atmosphere of Mars
and water in the ice caps
at the North Pole.
The presence of water
stimulated the idea
that perhaps life evolved there.
[Carl] In the Mariner 9
mission, we were able
to look at Mars for the
first time close enough.
If there were a civilization
on Mars like ours,
we would have detected it.
- It isn't there.
- [man] Right.
But that doesn't exclude,
uh, uh, plants and animals,
and even big animals, on Mars.
There's no evidence for them.
- Right.
- But there's nothing
to exclude them. And that's
the, the great thing about
the Viking mission to Mars,
which goes to Mars in 1976.
It's for the first time
we'll be able to find out.
We'll have cameras, look around,
see if anybody interesting
walks by.
[whirring]
[mysterious music]
[Gentry]
In 1974, when we were
planning to do this,
nobody had ever demonstrated
they could land on a planet
with an atmosphere.
We had no idea what
the terrain was like at all.
All we could see
from the Mariner pictures
were pieces
roughly the size of LA.
Everyone told us
that what we should do
if we were gonna
try to land on Mars
was just build a little sphere
that would survive with a window
and a camera.
We said, "Nope,
we are going to go to Mars,
and we are going
to try to figure out
whether or not
there is life there."
And so
the Viking mission to Mars,
which included two landers
and two orbiters,
was designed to try to determine
whether or not
there was life on Mars.
But we did not have any idea
how to look for
any kind of life,
except that kind of life
that exists on Earth.
And that was
what drove the design
of our instrumentation.
We were Earth chauvinists.
[slow ominous music]
I saw the Viking launches.
Viking was my first launch.
In 1975, we launched
two Viking spacecraft.
We were all so worried
about the possibility
of a failure.
So, there were two
for the very first launch
and landing on the planet Mars.
[men talking indistinctly]
[man]
six, five,
four, three, two, one, zero.
[whooshing]
[Gentry]
In my mind,
I was inside the spacecraft,
going through step by step
what the sequence was.
[slow pensive music]
Flying to Mars
was going to take nine months.
We managed to go into orbit
and look at the surface of Mars
with these fantastic new cameras
that we had,
which were 20 times better
than the ones
that had flown
on the Mariner 9 spacecraft
in 1971...
to determine
the right place to land.
I was responsible
for something called
Landing Site Certification.
Our pre-selected site
turned out to be filled
with gigantic boulders,
and is a mess.
Nobody knew the answer.
The best way to solve a problem
that nobody's ever solved before
is to get a half a dozen
of the smartest people
you can possibly find in a room,
and you say,
"What should we do now?"
And every one of them
is energized
to put his or her
best ideas forward.
And if someone in the room says,
"This is what I think
should be done,"
somebody else might say,
"That's ridiculous.
It won't work."
And we didn't pull any punches.
Are you gonna commit to a place
in order to land there?
You have to fly over...
- Okay, Gerry, a valley.
- [man] No, let me get rid
- of the emotional argument.
- Okay.
[Gentry]
This culture
of intellectual confrontation,
and we would go
on and on, you know.
At that time,
telling somebody else
you didn't think
their idea was good...
didn't cause any problems.
All we know is
there's an area right here.
Forget the whole
emotional argument
about canyons...
[Gentry]
I remember working
17 hours a day.
I had a cot in my office.
And I wasn't the only one.
We would look at a site
every two or three days.
Seventeen days later,
everybody was
completely exhausted.
And I'll never forget a meeting.
It was two o'clock
in the morning,
and we had found a site
that looked better
than any of the other sites,
but still not perfect.
And Carl Sagan,
and Hal Masursky,
and Jim Martin,
and Tom Young and I were,
2:00 a.m. in the morning,
looking at the pictures
that had come down
and spread them out.
And Hal Masursky
plopped his head down
on the table, said,
"I can't do this anymore.
Let's go here."
And that was it.
[tense music]
From then on, it was a piece
of artificial intelligence.
[man on radio]
59,000 feet, coming up.
Onboard require pretty soon.
[Gentry]
You hit the top
of the Martian atmosphere
going 12 to 13,000 miles
an hour.
[man talking indistinctly
on radio]
[Gentry]
It had to
burn off a heat shield
to remove the kinetic energy,
then pop a parachute.
Then, fire thrusters...
and land softly
on the surface.
[man 1 on radio]
177 feet per second.
[man 2 speaking indistinctly]
[man 1]
Parachute separation. Roger.
[man 2]
Minus 105, 23 g's.
[man 1]
2600 feet, 188 feet per second.
Twenty-six hundred feet!
Twenty-six hundred feet!
[Gentry]
It's become known as
"the seven minutes of terror."
Three sixty-six feet,
73 feet per second.
-Come on.
-[man 2 on radio]
ACS is close to vertical.
-[man 1 on radio]
I have us green for touchdown.
-[man 2 on radio]ACS is green,
1.5 degrees per second max.
0.2 g's, eight feet per second.
[man 4 on radio]
Touchdown. We have touchdown.
[all cheering]
[suspenseful music]
[man 3 on radio]
Yes, we have a touchdown time
of 12 hours, 12 minutes...
[Gentry]
We're standing there,
looking at a screen
of the first photograph
ever to be taken
from the surface
of another planet.
[narrator]
Mars, from the surface.
Man's age-old dream
of a close-up look
at what it's like
on another planet,
and of searching for life there,
today became a reality.
[man]This is
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
in Pasadena, California,
where scientists are jubilant
over the successful landing
of the Viking 1 spaceship
on the planet Mars this morning.
They are starting to get
a picture from Mars,
212 million miles away,
and we are seeing now
the first close-up view
of the Red Planet.
[gentle music]
[Gerald Ford]
My very best wishes
for a great job.
We're all very proud of you.
- Good luck.
- Thank you, Mr. President.
Thank you.
[muted]
[Gentry]
Joy. It's indescribable.
[excited chatter]
There was party after party,
after the Viking landings,
and such science fiction
luminaries as Robert Heinlein,
Gene Roddenberry,
Ray Bradbury, Nichelle Nichols,
these people understood
that there is a connection
between science fiction...
...and engineering.
From this moment on,
life is on Mars.
An extension
of our sensibilities,
of our eyeballs,
of our sense of touch,
of our scientific intuition.
That, to me,
is the important thing
about the last few minutes,
that man has reached out
across space
and is really
touching this planet.
And so our life is on Mars
as of this hour.
[Gentry]
One of the most important
attributes associated
with the human species
is the ability to be amazed,
to feel inside yourself
an incredible rush.
Look at that!
[slow atmospheric music]
[man] What about
the ages-old question
of life on the planet Mars?
From the photograph
that we are now viewing,
is there any indication of it?
Now the boom will azimuth over
and move out of the way.
We will take the final picture.
This is being done at 2:30,
uh, our time here on Mars.
The first information
will be down between
5:30 and 6:30 tonight.
We should have the data analyzed
by around eight o'clock.
We thought we were building
a suite of instruments
that would go there
and would unambiguously
answer the question,
"Is there life on Mars?"
We did not prepare
for ambiguity.
Latest data
from the Viking 2 lander vehicle
still shows no signs of life
on Mars,
but the scientists
haven't given up hope.
[Gentry]
Today, the sense that
Viking found no life on Mars
is very much in question.
Gil Levin, who was
the principal investigator
or the lead scientist,
if you prefer, has contended...
for the rest of his life...
He died last year
at the age of 97.
That what his instrument saw
could only be interpreted
as a sign of life.
[Gentry]
We have two competing ideas,
one of which suggests
that we found biology
and the other one
of which suggests
that everything we have seen
is chemistry.
I think it's fair to say...
[Gentry]
When it was all over...
we discovered
that the American press in 1976
did not fully understand
the significance of landing
on Mars.
If you find any organisms,
will they be brought back
to the Earth?
No. All the equipment
we send to Mars
will stay at Mars.
So, then there won't be
any little green monsters
attacking our cities?
No. All the tests we make
will be made...
[Gentry]
It was apparent
both in what was written
in the newspapers...
...and also from the questions
that they asked us
at the press conference.
I would like to start
explaining now.
Is that all right?
- [man] Yeah.
- Okay. First of all...
[Gentry]
They struggled
to even comprehend
what it is we're trying to do,
much less why it's important.
The study of climatic change
on Mars
should illuminate
our understanding
of climatic change on Earth.
Let me now show what we found
with the mass spectrometer
on the lander.
[Gentry]
Most scientists and engineers
cannot easily explain,
and don't even want to,
the emotions associated
with what they have done.
Mike, do you wanna add to that?
[Gentry]
And they're
much more comfortable
working inside the technology
that they understand...
Because the escape process
let's me... let's us, I believe,
extrapolate backwards...
[Gentry]
which is incomprehensible
to the person on the street.
[Mike]
Uh, I'm still confused.
Where exactly do we stand
on whether there could be life
in this region?
There is nothing
in this analysis that says
there is life on Mars.
[indistinct chatter]
[Gentry]
After a couple of weeks,
the interest in the media
- was starting to wane
a little bit.
- [indistinct]
[Gentry]
And then, one morning,
my executive assistant
came into my office
and said, "Gentry,
ABC's on line 1.
NBC's on line 2.
CBS is on line 3.
And the National Enquirer
is on line 4."
I said, "What for?"
"Because of the writing
on the rocks on Mars."
Those remarkably vivid pictures
that we've been receiving
from Mars
created a flurry of excitement
across the country last night,
when one of them seemed to form
the letters B and G on rocks.
Is there any meaning at all
to this?
[man 1]
This picture, with a letter B
apparently written on a rock,
produced a brief flurry
of excitement.
[man 2]
For a while, it looked
like there was graffiti
left by someone
or something on Mars.
[Gentry]
So I went
to the press conference.
There were
a hundred people there,
including all the reporters
from the local Los Angeles
television stations.
So we went through.
"My name is Bert Gentry Lee,
and my initials are BGL."
And what someone
thought they saw
on the rocks on Mars
was a B and a G.
And so everybody thought
it was my initials
on a rock on Mars.
So I said, "It is conceivable
that at some time
in the dim, dark, distant past,
there was life on Mars.
And there may even be
life today.
And it is remotely possible,
with a very, very
low probability
that intelligence
might have emerged.
And that intelligence
might desire to communicate
with intelligence
somewhere else.
But there is no number
small enough to define
the probability
that any intelligent life
that ever lived on Mars
would choose to communicate
with the rest of the universe
using Latin letters!"
[slow suspenseful music]
Why were more people
not astonished
by Apollo and Viking?
Why did the scale
of those accomplishments
not reverberate
throughout the entire country,
or maybe the entire species...
as gigantic events?
This bothered me a great deal,
and it also bothered Carl Sagan.
But we have to understand
what we're talking about
when we say...
[Gentry]
So Carl said to me...
"Somebody ought to do
something about it."
And I said,
"That somebody could be us."
And he said,
"How do we do that?"
"We make a television series."
He said, "We don't know
a thing about making
a television series."
And I looked at him
straight in the eye, I said,
"Ten years ago,
I didn't know anything
about landing on Mars."
And that was the beginning
of Cosmos.
- [indistinct chatter]
- [clapper claps]
[suspenseful music]
[Gentry]
Carl, at that point,
was the preeminent expositor
of everything in space.
He had just begun
his regular times
on Johnny Carson.
[Johnny]
Would you welcome
Dr. Carl Sagan?
- [audience applauding]
- [Gentry]So he was known.
Carl was a magnificent
science writer.
When Carl would write pieces,
oh, my gosh,
I would get tears in my eyes.
They were beautiful.
We're made of star stuff.
We are a way for the cosmos
to know itself.
[man]Cosmos takes you
on an epic journey
through space and time.
[Gentry]
Cosmos was successful
beyond our wildest belief.
We were bringing
the sense of excitement
and wonder
that makes people
of a scientific bent
believe that what they're doing
is so important.
Magical, almost.
[indistinct chatter]
[indistinct conversation]
[Gentry]
One of the most
wonderful attributes
about some of the really clever
and innovative engineers
that I have known in my life
is that they become
genuinely excited
when confronted by a problem
that appears to be impossible
to solve.
[suspenseful music]
[Gentry]
In 1964,
a professor of astronomy
visiting Jet Propulsion
Laboratory,
a man named Gary Flandreau,
discovered that the planets
in our solar system
would be aligned in such a way
for a short period of time
that a spacecraft
leaving the Earth
could fly by Jupiter,
get a gravity assist
from Jupiter, fly by Saturn,
get a gravity assist
from Saturn,
and go on to Uranus and Neptune.
Four bodies
that all we knew about
were little tiny pictures
on cameras
that had been taken
from telescopes
on the planet Earth.
And I remember, at the time,
as a young man...
Remember,
I started my background
in celestial mechanics
and navigation.
I was thrilled with the idea.
Could we possibly
build a spacecraft
that could do that?
My role on Voyager
was to be a member
of the review board
to determine whether or not
what the project is doing
makes sense.
[man]
Three, two, one...
We have ignition
and we have lift-off.
We have lift-off
of the Titan Centaur
carrying the first
of two Voyager spacecraft
to extend man's senses
farther into the solar system
than ever before.
[somber music]
[somber vocalizing]
[Gentry]
As the first Voyager spacecraft
sped toward Jupiter...
the four large moons
were still just blips.
We knew virtually nothing
about them.
And little by little,
these moons began to bloom.
And I will never forget,
this young woman in her twenties
was part of the navigation team
and was looking
at the photographs
as they came in
for the first time,
and she saw this flare
on the moon, Io.
[vocalizing continues]
Linda Morabito discovered
that Io was indeed
exploding with volcanoes
all over its surface.
The next one was Europa,
a moon of Jupiter,
which we are almost certain
contains a vast
liquid water ocean
underneath its ice shell.
So much water.
Maybe ten to 100 times
as much water
as there is on the planet Earth.
And life could have formed.
Such a thing
had never even been imagined.
[vocalizing continues]
There is a moon of Saturn
called Enceladus.
Material spewing out
of what appears to be
a liquid water ocean
underneath the ice
that covers Enceladus.
Thirty years later,
Cassini would discover
that Enceladus had valleys
cut into the surface,
out of which
geysers are pouring.
And then, Titan,
the largest moon
in the solar system,
another moon of Saturn,
it's larger than our moon,
has an atmosphere.
And that atmosphere
is mostly nitrogen
and is rich in organic material.
I mean, there are
all the amino acids
that make up our DNA.
You can find them
in the atmosphere of Titan.
And so Voyager went on.
New world after new world.
These are real places.
They don't look like anything
we've ever seen before.
What does that say
about the place where we live?
[vocalizing continues]
From the very beginning,
it was understood
that the Grand Tour
would eventually accelerate
the two Voyager spacecraft
so that they would leave
the solar system altogether.
[vocalizing fades]
[slow atmospheric music]
This piqued the interests
of many of the broadest minds
on the planet.
And, of course, Carl Sagan
was fascinated by this.
- [muted conversation]
- [Gentry]So, Carl went to work
with a team of people,
including Frank Drake,
to design something
called the Voyager Record...
with the imaginative idea
that suppose some
intelligent extraterrestrial
somewhere out in space,
somewhere hundreds of thousands
of years from now, perhaps,
would grab
the Voyager spacecraft
and would see this record.
It is a record,
and there's information
on the side of it
that tells you how to play it.
[boy]
Hello from the children
of planet Earth.
[flute music]
[Kurt]
As the Secretary General
of the United Nations,
I send greetings
on behalf of the people
of our planet.
- [David]Shalom.
- [Erik speaks Spanish]
[Stella speaks Cantonese]
[Salma speaks Arabic]
[Saul speaks Nyanja]
[Frederick speaks Greek]
[jungle sounds]
[thunder rumbling]
[woman vocalizing]
[Gentry]
The exercise
of defining what sounds of Earth
to put on that record
was a fascinating
Rorschach test
of the human species.
[whimsical music]
What is on that record
is a digest of some
of the broadest and best
sounds that human beings
have ever produced in music.
["Symphony No. 5 in C Minor,
Op. 67" by Beethoven]
There is an absolutely
widespread set of music
from all the different cultures
on the planet.
[string instrument playing]
So it is possible
that there are extraterrestrials
out there somewhere.
- And it is possible...
- [music playing on record]
that they will understand
how to play that record.
And if they have any limbs,
they will move in rhythm
when they listen to Chuck Berry
singing "Johnny B. Goode."
["Johnny B. Goode"
by Chuck Berry]
[song fades]
[indistinct chatter]
[Gentry]
I get asked often, "Would you
like to go into space?"
And my answer is,
"I already have.
Many times."
The part of me
that is uniquely human
was there.
The best part of me.
Not my body, but my mind.
[dull, droning music]
[Gentry]
If what we are trying to do
in exploring space
is to add to the knowledge
of the human species,
a much more effective way
to do it
is to do it with robots
instead of people.
Why?
It's very simple.
We have to make sure
the humans stay alive,
which means that
wherever we send them,
we have to bring them back.
Now...
someone might say,
"Gentry Lee, I thought
you were imaginative,
and it's clear that you have
a failure of the imagination."
[slow atmospheric music]
No good scientist,
engineer or futurist
ever makes
a categorical statement
that something is impossible.
However...
our technology today
does not allow us to mount
an instrumented expedition
to a planet
around another star
with a flight time less than,
listen carefully, 10,000 years.
[slow warbling]
[mysterious music]
[gentry]
When I first started thinking
about the exploration of space,
I said,
"Well, what's the end point
of all this?
Are we gonna meet some aliens?"
So I did a lot of work.
Research, study,
reading and so forth.
And I first realized
that, that all alien discussions
fall into these three categories
that are well known in...
within that genre,
which is,
there's close encounters
of the first kind,
which is,
"Wow, did you see that?"
[narrator]
This is a UFO,
Unidentified Flying Object,
- popularly called
a flying saucer.
- [camera clicking]
[Gentry]When I was very young,
I was fascinated by this
entire subject.
[Donald]
We are being observed
by some type of device
which is ahead of us,
far ahead of us,
and is probably controlled
by a highly-advanced,
superior civilization.
I saw two red lights
and I saw what looked
to be shaped like a pie.
I saw a flying object
that was not manufactured,
in my opinion, on this Earth,
that was metallic,
and it was an aircraft.
I was not that interested
in either
close encounters
of the first kind or the second.
But the ones
that were close encounters
of the third kind,
those definitely piqued
my imagination.
And, of course, at that time,
the Betty and Barney Hill story
about being abducted
was big news,
and everybody
was talking about it.
[interviewer]
What language
did you speak to them?
[Betty]
I spoke in English,
and I don't know
what language they spoke in,
but I understood them
in English.
[interviewer]
Well, how tall were these men?
[Barney]
I estimate about
four and a half to five feet.
- [Betty]I'm five feet.
- [Barney]Five feet. Yes.
I have talked face to face...
to people who say they have
been abducted by aliens.
There were a couple of brothers
from Louisiana
who said that they regularly
had contact with aliens.
They just carried me
right up to the craft
and, and we just
seemed, seemed to glide
right through the door.
Well, they took him in first,
and I was right behind.
You know,
when I got to the door,
when I passed out, and...
That's how scared I was.
[man]
I didn't see any neck.
It looked like
it just sit down
on a, on a body,
if you call it a body.
And they had arms,
and they didn't have hands
as we have.
They, they had more or less
like pinchers or, or claws
or something like that.
[Gentry]
It does not matter
whether or not
they have any physical proof...
because to them,
the experience is real.
[slow suspenseful music]
There is nothing
in Air Force files,
in either the classified files
or the unclassified files,
that come to a conclusion
that spaceships
have visited the Earth.
[Gentry]
Do I believe that there are
unidentified flying objects?
Absolutely.
Do I believe
that they are being piloted
by aliens from another world?
Well, not exactly.
[tense music]
- [indistinct radio chatter]
- [man]Oh, got it!
[Gentry]
If you cannot explain
what you have found,
invoke the least unlikely
hypothesis to explain it.
It's called Occam's Razor.
[indistinct radio chatter]
[Gentry]
It is a giant step
from those photographs, videos,
whatever you want to call them,
to there are aliens
that are here.
Do you believe our government
has made contact with
intelligent extraterrestrials?
You said that
the government has
alien bodies or alien species.
Have you seen, have you,
have you seen the spacecraft?
The American people largely
believe that the government
has actively covered up
the truth about UAPs.
[Gentry]
This general lack
of scientific literacy
hurts us in
a very significant way
as a society.
The image was of something
that I am not able to attach
to any human capability.
Were they, I guess,
human or non-human biologics?
[somber music]
[Gentry]
The probability
that any alien creature
would look anything at all
like us is so close to zero,
you can't possibly calculate it.
- Go back to your station.
- [Gentry] Even with some of
the very best
science fiction movies.
And I think Arrival
is one of them,
representing extraterrestrials
as being dramatically
different from us.
Whenever we talk
about communication
with an extraterrestrial
intelligence,
we have to ask ourselves
what common ground
would we have with them?
[pensive music]
On the planet Earth,
we have recognized
how difficult it is
to communicate
with even an obviously
intelligent species
when the whole framework
of their existence
is foreign to us.
Octopuses are
the most interesting,
because their connection to us
is 600 million years
of evolution away.
That means that the intelligence
that has developed in octopuses
is altogether different
than anything we can imagine.
Now, I am asked often,
"Do you believe
that intelligence exists
beyond the planet Earth?"
And I always say,
"Yes, I do believe that."
There could be, right now,
alien machines
all over the Earth.
They could be
hidden inside atoms,
inside protons or electrons.
"What? How would that happen?"
My colleague,
Arthur C. Clarke...
[clears throat]
once made
the following statement...
"The technology of
an extraterrestrial civilization
will be indistinguishable
from magic."
[slow dramatic music]
[Arthur]
The idea of contact
with extraterrestrial beings
is something
that's always fascinated me,
and has been
a main theme of my stories.
I'm sure it will happen one day.
I think it's possible
it may have happened
in the remote past.
If we are exploring space now,
then obviously,
superior intelligences
must have been doing this
for millions of years.
[Gentry]
I was an Arthur C. Clarke fan
from very early in my life.
When I read Childhood's End,
which is a truly amazing book
about alien contact,
I said, "This man's mind
is absolutely fantastic."
[indistinct chatter]
[Gentry]
Arthur C. Clarke
is widely regarded
as one of the most
complete and imaginative minds
that existed
in the second part
of the 20th century.
[Arthur]
I wish I could sign
with both hands.
- [laughter]
- [Gentry]He rose to fame early
on two different fronts...
A science fiction front,
and at virtually
the same time in his life,
he wrote a paper
for the British
Interplanetary Society in 1948
that would lead
to the ability to have
satellite communications.
You've been honored
for your pioneer work
in suggesting
the communications satellite,
which was purely your idea.
[Arthur]
In the very near future,
communication satellites
are, are going to multiply
the channels of communication,
uh, to the man in the street.
[Gentry]
Nobody had ever
conceived of that before.
So, here is a British person
who had
a tremendous scientific mind
and a tremendous imagination.
[man]
Our next speaker really needs
no introduction at all.
Arthur C. Clarke.
[Gentry]
Arthur's name
became much wider spread
throughout the media
and the popular vernacular...
Mr. Arthur C. Clarke.
[Gentry]
because of 2001.
["The Blue Danube"
by Johann Strauss]
Directed by Stanley Kubrick,
produced in 1968.
All of a sudden,
Arthur became famous.
[Arthur]
The success of 2001
was a great surprise to me,
and I suspect,
to Stanley Kubrick.
Of course, we thought it...
we hoped it would be successful,
but we never imagined it would
become a, a cult movie
and have such tremendous
sustaining power.
[Gentry]
I know of no person
who went to that movie
that didn't come out
absolutely flabbergasted.
Open the pod bay doors, Hal.
[Hal]
I'm sorry, Dave,
I'm afraid I can't do that.
[Gentry]
So, as I was growing up,
he was revered.
[interviewer] Is it correct
to refer to you as a scientist?
Because, really,
you decided to be a writer,
didn't you,
even though
you're qualified in science?
I have a science degree,
but it's more accurate
to call me a science writer.
[song fades]
[slow suspenseful music]
[birds chirping]
[Gentry]
Arthur came to
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
This was around 1980.
I made certain that
I was going to be his guide.
I just went crazy
talking about Space Odyssey,
and about his discovery
of communication satellites,
and about Childhood's End
and all that sort of stuff.
And he was gracious,
and he smiled,
and that was that.
So, years went by,
and he and I
developed a partnership.
[birds chirping]
Arthur lived
in the capital city
of Sri Lanka,
which is called Colombo,
in this wonderful house.
[chattering]
Oh, no, don't. Come on, love.
Come on. Come on. Come on.
[Gentry]
I will never forget,
Arthur and I went to dinner
and Arthur said to me,
"I like the way you think.
Have you ever thought
about doing any writing?"
And I said,
"Yes, sir. I have thought
about writing all my life."
And he said,
"Have you ever thought about
writing any science fiction?"
Oh, boy.
The science fiction grand master
of the world is asking me,
an engineer,
if I've ever thought about
writing any science fiction?
I said, "Yes, sir."
He says, "I don't want
to promise you anything,
but I would like
to offer you a chance
to write a novel with me.
The book is going to be by
Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee.
But you're going to write it,
I'm going to edit it."
The Rama books are very simple.
Sometime in the future,
a gigantic cylindrical spaceship
suddenly appears
in our solar system,
obviously having come
from another star.
[slow suspenseful music]
The greatest value
of science fiction
is the way it opens your mind
to possibilities.
[man]
Captain's log, stardate 1513.4.
[Gentry]When Arthur C. Clarke
and I were talking about
writing together,
we spent a lot of time
talking about Star Trek
before we concluded that to us,
the difference between
fantasy and real science fiction
is that in fantasy,
it doesn't have to be plausible.
It doesn't have to obey
the laws of physics.
Message, Captain.
Starship based on Current Four
requesting explanation
of our delay here, sir.
[Gentry]
For Arthur and for me,
science fiction writing,
to be good,
must be not implausible.
Doesn't have to be plausible.
It has to be not implausible.
[Arthur]
One of the important roles
of science fiction
is to develop flexibility
and to make people realize
that these possibilities exist,
and to construct
in their own minds
sort of, scenarios,
say, "Well, wouldn't it be nice
if we can do so-and-so?"
And then, "Well, can we?
What are the problems?
What should we do to aim
towards this particular future
which seems an attractive one?"
[intriguing music]
Technology is what's
made us human.
Uh, from the, uh, ape-man
who picked up the first bone
as we tried to show in 2001.
Everything that distinguishes us
from the animals
is our technology.
Spirituality will always remain
because the universe
will always be full of mystery.
There will always be things
we don't know.
And one of
the most important reasons
for going into space
is to encounter other races
that's perhaps been thinking
about this sort of thing for
not a few thousand years,
as we have,
but for millions of years.
[music continues]
[Gentry]
We know today
there are close
to a trillion planets.
From the beginning,
we have postulated
those planets existed.
Now we know they are there.
This discovery has kicked off
many, many other missions
to try to understand...
if out there somewhere
there might be another place
like the Earth
in orbit,
in a region around a stable star
where water can be liquid,
where life could have evolved.
We can't say today
what technological advances
will occur
that will someday allow
a human imprint.
Not physical, necessarily,
but at least mental
or spiritual,
on another star system.
[music continues]
[music fades]
However...
our desires for exploration
must always be balanced
by the need to make certain
that what is happening
in the already explored world
is not unstable.
[whooshes]
If our future world
will be unstable,
there will be no exploration
of interstellar space.
What kind of damage are we...
[Dan]
Damage?
Total, sir.
It's what we call
a global k*ller.
The end of mankind.
- Doesn't matter...
- [Gentry]There are many themes
in science fiction...
My God.
What do we do?
In which the Earth becomes
essentially unlivable.
[dramatic music]
[man]
High on a mountaintop,
an army of scientists
work desperately
to build this giant rocket
to carry a few picked survivors
of our doomed civilization
to a new life on another world.
[Gentry]
And there is a yearning
to go somewhere else,
to start anew.
[tense music]
The idea that we can escape
the problems
we create on this planet
without understanding
how we created them,
and go to someplace else
and not make the same mistakes,
in my opinion,
is a logical fallacy.
[man]
Mr. Musk, kind of talk us
through your thought process.
[Gentry]
I've actually had this
conversation with Elon Musk.
The idea of human beings
living on Mars.
It's easy to imagine.
But I would not put that as high
in my goal of things
for the human species
to think about,
as I put doing something
about climate change.
[humming]
[Carl]
Every planet with an atmosphere
has some degree
of a greenhouse effect.
The most spectacular case by far
is the greenhouse effect
of Venus.
The surface temperature
is about 470 degrees centigrade,
900 Fahrenheit.
[Gentry]
Studying the climate
on Venus and Mars
makes it very clear
that climate is not
a stable thing.
[birds chirping]
Did Venus go from being
Earth-like at one time
to a runaway greenhouse effect
because of climate change?
That's a terrifying idea.
At the beginning
of the evolution
of the solar system...
Mars had liquid water.
It was wet and warm at a time
when the Earth
was inhospitable to life.
Our scientific investigations
on the planet Earth
have allowed us to construct
a fairly accurate
historical representation
of the atmosphere of the Earth,
all the way back to
two or three billion years ago.
There was a time
when the entire surface
of the Earth
was covered with snow.
There have been times
in our history
when there was not a smidgen
of ice or snow anywhere
on the planet.
[humming continues]
We now have predictions
on what the climate
on the planet Earth
will be like in the future...
as a function of what we do.
- [tense music]
- [crackling]
We are here today
after an incredible
and fantastic multiple
billion years of evolution,
during which time
there have been
five different events
that have wiped out almost all
of the species on the planet.
[growling, sniffing]
[Gentry]
If that particular
set of events...
- [growling]
- did not happen,
the Earth would still be
populated by dinosaurs.
And what motivation
would the dinosaurs ever have
to develop radio,
to understand
the electromagnetic spectrum?
Possibly none.
What we have concluded...
is that the emergence of life
might not be that difficult,
but the emergence
of intelligence
will not happen
unless the life
is threatened in some way,
and there becomes a premium
on developing those skills
- that are necessary to survive.
- [crackling]
[pensive music]
One of the by-products
of my lifelong engagement
in the exploration of space
has been a deep realization
of how wonderful this Earth is,
and what marvels
there are here that
we can enjoy
and derive pleasure from.
[somber vocalizing]
I am a passionate
environmentalist.
[birds chirping]
If I have free time,
I'm out in nature.
I go to Park City every year.
As soon as I am
15 minutes into the hike,
I am alone with the trees,
with the occasional moose
who goes across the path.
And this last trip,
I broke into tears
because all
I could think about is...
how is it possible...
that something so natural,
with which we didn't have
anything to do with,
can be so beautiful?
[rustling]
[birds chirping]
[woman]
Make sure to have
your tickets ready to go.
[gentle music]
[indistinct chatter]
[Gentry]
When you start to think...
[yells indistinctly]
[Gentry]
that perhaps...
we are a singularity,
a rarity...
it makes you
suddenly become aware
of things that you never
thought about before.
Like making certain
that we survive.
Making sure that we understand
what are the characteristics
that we have that will
lift us up...
and those
that will cause us...
to wipe ourselves out.
This struggle...
between what I consider
to be the good in human beings
and the bad in human beings...
...was a subject that
Arthur C. Clarke and I
discussed at great detail.
[Klaatu]
Your choice is simple.
Join us and live in peace,
or pursue your present course
and face obliteration.
We shall be waiting
for your answer.
The decision rests with you.
[Gentry]
Before the first planetary
explorations took place...
I never thought
that each one of these worlds
we would explore
would be so vastly different
than the planet Earth.
And what happened
as I matured in my life
and I realized...
how different...
and inhospitable
all these places were...
I came to say, "Oh, my gosh...
we live in paradise
and we don't even know it."
["Starman" by David Bowie]
Hey, now, now
Goodbye, love
Didn't know what time it was
The lights were low-o-o
I leaned back
On my radio-o-o
Some cat was laying down
Some rock and roll
"Lotta soul," he said
Then the loud sound
It seemed to fade
Came back
Like a slow voice
On a wave of phase
That was no deejay
That was hazy cosmic jive
There's a starman
Waiting in the sky
He'd like to come
And meet us
But he thinks
He'd blow our minds
There's a starman
Waiting in the sky
He's told us not to blow it
'Cause he knows
It's all worthwhile
He told me
Let the children lose it
Let the children use it
Let all the children boogie
La, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la
La, la, la, la
La, la, la, la
La, la, la, la
La, la, la, la
La, la, la, la
La, la, la, la
La, la, la, la
La, la, la, la
La, la, la, la
La, la, la, la
La, la, la, la
La, la, la, la
La, la, la, la
La, la, la, la
La, la, la, la
La, la, la, la
La, la, la, la
La, la, la, la
La, la, la, la
La, la, la, la
La, la, la, la
[song fades]
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Did you know that you can remove censorship board-wide, use our advanced search functions, be notified when new content is posted, join our memberships, set episodes to show in any order you want & more if you are logged into your account?
Register or sign in here: ucp.php?mode=register
Starman (2025)
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