July 30, 2018 9:29 pm

Tuesday, Revisit Our 2017 SF Sketchfest Spectacular on Space Exploration and Citizen Science!

On this week’s episode of StarTalk All-Stars, we revisit our trip to last year’s SF Sketchfest. Join us as host Bill Nye the Science Guy, comic co-host Eugene Mirman, space activist Ariel Waldman, SF Sketchfest co-founder Janet Varney, and comedian Claudia O’Doherty explore the world of space exploration.

Ariel sits on the council for NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts, which develops radical science fiction-based ideas that could advance the frontier of space travel. You’ll find out about some of the ideas currently being explored, like a comet propulsion system, Water Walls, urban bio-mining, and Orbiting Rainbows – an exoplanet imagery project that involves space glitter and lasers. You’ll also find out more about the Super Ball Bot, a robot based on transegrity structures.

Be careful, though – all this invention talk might send you off on a mad scientist frenzy! The last time I went into a mad scientist frenzy I was 11-years old and I came up with the idea for an iPod to play video. The rest is history, i.e., Apple stole my idea. But that’s neither here nor there (they stole it).

We then transition into discussing the rise of citizen science. You’ll hear how Ariel stumbled into her job at NASA without any science background whatsoever. She tells us about her plan to “hack” space exploration and make it easier for citizens to participate. We also explore Breakthrough StarShot, LightSail 2, and Bill explains how a discovery of life on Mars would…wait for it… change the world! Tune in next week as we re-visit Part 2.

Please join us tomorrow night for StarTalk Live! from SF Sketchfest 2017 (Part 1) (Repeat) at 7pm ET right here on our website, as well as on our All-Stars channels on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and TuneIn. And if you’re an All-Access subscriber, you can watch or listen to this episode ad-free at 7pm, too.

That’s it for now. Keep Looking Up!
–Ian Mullen