Transcript
0:00 [Music] he is the recipient of 18 honorary doctorates and the NASA distinguished public service medal the highest award given by NASA to a non-governmental individual his contributions to the public appreciation of the cosmos have been recognized by the international as astronomical Union in their official naming of asteroid 13123 Tyson
0:30 on the lighter side he was voted sexiest astrophysicist Alive by People magazine in 2000 Ty Tyson is the first occupant of the Frederick P Rose directorship of the Hayden planetarium he lives in New York City with his wife Alice Young from the rice class of 1979 and their two children please join me and giving a huge rice welcome to Dr Neil degrass
1:16 Tyson thank you for that warm introduction but it requires a couple of clarifications I I'd like to offer that that asteroid with my name on it before I agreed to accept that distinction I verified it was not headed towards Earth cuz that would that would be rough right there that story Tyson takes out North America uh also that um People magazine distinction uh sexiest astrophysicist
1:48 alive first you have to consider the category all right I don't not something you get bigheaded about I don't think uh indeed my wife is a graduate of Rice University and somehow of all the things that she remembers most uh what I seem to hear most about uh it was Baker beer bike right is that if that still happens now back when she was there the official drinking age in Texas was still
2:19 14 so I don't [Laughter] know now why am I asked to deliver this Commencement Address I I think it's because of my Association my long Association as sort of a follower and adviser of NASA and it was announced that this is the 100th anniversary the closing of the 100th year of the founding of the school
2:51 it's also the closing of the 50th year of the famous speech given by President Kennedy in rice Stadium to an audience of audience of 35,000 people titled we choose to go to the Moon speech that very phrase appears in the speech and it is followed by the phrase not because it's easy but because it's hard that speech was delivered here on
3:21 the campus of Rice University that was delivered a year after President Kennedy announced that maybe the Moon is something we should do some place we should go to that was first announc in Congress May 25th 1961 we were spooked into him saying that six weeks before that speech the Soviet Union launched yuria Garin into orbit as I tweeted about a year ago yuam
3:54 was the fifth mammal to achieve this feat after a dog a chimp a few mice and a hamster but the point there is in that speech that's where he uttered the phrase we will put a man on a moon return him safely to Earth before the decade is out that's kind of all he said about the moon in that speech the whole plan got laid out in rice Stadium a year
4:26 later so you can say oh we had Charisma and will and political motivation back then until you look at the beginning of that speech he gave to Congress three paragraphs be two or three paragraphs before he says we'll go to the Moon he says the events of recent weeks Yuri Gagarin going into orbit if those are any indication of the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere
4:56 then we need to show the PA show the world the path to Freedom over the path to tyranny it was a battlecry against communism people were spooked NASA got founded a year after Sputnik was launched motivated by a cold war climate so what happens President Kennedy gives his let's go to the Moon speech in rice Stadium a year later rice
5:26 donates the land that is Johnson Space Center that is the seat of the astronaut program of NASA Rice University was there at the beginning of this epic adventure to the moon now I've studied this what drives people to do things I've looked throughout all of time all of human time and I found only three drivers that get people to do things in a big way one of
5:59 them is war War that's obvious to any political analyst War makes you spend money like it's a flowing river even when you don't have money you spend the money like it's a flowing river War one of the great motivators of human conduct a next motivator is money so the first is I don't want to die the next one is I don't want to die poor right two great motivators in the history of human cultures is a third motivator much less
6:29 reveal in the world today and that's the praise of royalty and deity that's what gets you the pyramids in Egypt and the the church building and cathedral building of Europe today you don't find gods and and Kings driving major Investments so we're left with just sort of war and money that's kind of what's going on here but we haven't been honest with ourselves about that if you go to Kennedy Space Center in Florida there is that section of his
7:00 speech we'll go to the Moon before the decade is out and it sense chills up your spine because he galvanized an entire nation but what's missing on the granite wall behind where this is chiseled in is the other part of the speech where he introduces the war driver no one ever spent big money just to explore no no one has ever done that I wish they did but they don't so we went to the moon on a war driver but that's
7:33 conveniently left out in the granite wall behind Kennedy they could have put it in and they could have summarized it kill the commies go to the Moon right that's what they could have said but they didn't that part got cleansed from our memory so cleansed from our memory that 20 years after we landed on the moon George Herbert Walker Bush wants to give a similar kind of Rabel arousing speech that Kennedy did July 20th 1989 he goes
8:04 to the steps of the airon space museum in Washington an auspicious day commemorating the moon landing an auspicious moment and he puts a lot of the same language in his speech reflecting on Columbus voyages and all the which was driven by money by the way all the great explorers of the past saying it's our time it's time to go to Mars time to go to Mars it got costed out at $500 billion it was DOA in Congress at
8:37 $500 billion but wait a minute that was going to be spent over about 30 years you divide 500 billion by 30 that's about $16 billion a year that's NASA's annual budget you could have just made that the trip to Mars but people got spooked by the money why you know what else happened in in 1989 peace broke out in Europe that's what happened in 1989 the war driver
9:08 evaporated no we didn't go to Mars no and people are saying oh we lost our drive we lost our will no it's the same will we've ever had we just weren't threatened that's a sobering thought but I there's a solution in there I think there's a solution how about the money driver do you realize in the 1960s the GDP per capita of the United States Rose 35% across that
9:39 decade and it hasn't risen that high since in fact in the in the in the decade of this Century it Rose 0% between 2000 and 2010 it' been dropping ever since of course there's a lot of complex analysis related to that but all I'm saying is one could say that going into space inspires people you can remove the war driver and say it'll boost our economy not just
10:09 spin-offs we always have spin-offs who doesn't love a good spin-off but it inspires people to innovate headlines we're going to the Moon we're going to Mars we're looking for water we're looking for fuel we want to deflect an asteroid these headlines hit the Press and you convert you you you shape a nation into one that becomes an innovation Nation that's what was going on in the 60s everybody was thinking about the
10:41 future that was the bloodiest decade on American soil since the Civil War a 100 years earlier Civil Rights Movement campus unrest 100 servicemen dying a week in a cold in a hot war in Southeast Asia we were in the middle of the Cold War 1968 the bloodiest year in that decade two assassinations Apollo 8 an unheralded Mission hardly ever hear of Apollo 8 the
11:12 first mission to leave Earth and go someplace other than orbit it went to the moon didn't land but it went to the moon December 1968 it orbited the moon came around the backside they held up a camera and there was Earth rising over the lunar surface that to this day is the most recognized photograph of anything at any time of any object earthrise and there
11:45 was Earth not as we had ever seen it it was in display as nature would have you absorb what it is there was Earth not with colorcoded countries there was Earth with oceans land clouds do you realize no representation of Earth before that included clouds No One thought to think that maybe the
12:16 atmosphere is part of Earth no one drew that before so what happens here's something interesting over the next four years 1969 70 71 72 73 5 years the following happens on Earth the Environmental Protection Agency is founded a comprehensive Clean Air Act a comprehensive Clean Water Act is
12:46 passed Earth Day is founded the organization Doctors Without Borders is founded where do they get that phrase Without Borders where did that come from did anyone before that photo think of Earth as a place Without Borders no what else happened DDT was banned the catalytic converter was introduced leaded gas was removed from the environment all of this happened in those five years while we were still at
13:18 War something changed about us after the publication of that photo it was a cultural response to our presence in in space it affected Commerce it affected how we treated Earth it ATT it affected our Outlook it had us thinking about a future as never before the World's Fair in New York City was all about the future all about the future the world
13:50 fair didn't create that decade the decade created that World's Fair and so you know what happens you go to the Moon you look back and it's a whole new perspective a cosmic perspective we went to the moon to explore it but in fact we discovered Earth for the first time that takes Vision by the way the first president of
14:21 Rice University was an astrophysicist look it up what if private Enterprise they're there they're going to help out but they're not going to lead this you know why they can't lead it because space is expensive it's dangerous and it has unquantified risks you put all three of those under one umbrella it cannot establish a capital Market valuation of that exercise private Enterprise comes later
14:53 governments need to do that first to find out where the trade winds are map the coastlines of space then private Enterprise comes in that's how it's always happened that's how it happened with Columbus the first Europeans to the new world were not the Dutch East India Trading Company ships it was Columbus funded by Spain in a vision that the nation had of exploration all of you will
15:23 graduate in some kind of major today a major but you know what your major is you can boast what you know in your major but at the end of the day it's actually a stove pipe you you know a lot about this thing that sits in a stove pipe but I just describ to you the Apollo program that involved mathematicians scientists engineers artists artists captured what this Voyage was and the pages of of Life
15:55 magazine and coler's magazine artists Engineers lawyers yes there are lawyers in there too it was an entire participation of a culture an interplay of politics science technology and who and what we were as a nation so your diploma is really not a ticket to show off what you know you know what it really is it's permission
16:30 to admit to yourself how much you still have yet to learn and you know it's still left to learn all the things that come together when great things happen in a nation when great things happen in a world as I said the science the art the geopolitics all of that matters all of nothing happens without some touching of all of those branches of culture there is no solution to a problem that
17:03 does not embrace all that we have created as a species so I can tell you the original seeds of the Space Program were planted right here on this campus and I can tell you that in the years since we landed on the moon America has lost its exploratory Compass but I know the talent that is seated did here cuz I have conversations with my wife I know who's in front of me right
17:35 now I know what Legacy means I know what happened here 50 years ago I know all of this and I can tell you that now is the time for you the class of 2013 to lead the nation as rice graduates once again thank you all for your your [Applause]
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