Fear, Love, Greed & Asteroids
Celestial Citizen Season 4 Ep. 1 with Dr. Martin Elvis Available Now!
Welcome to another episode and another season of Celestial Citizen Podcast! Today, we will be discussing all things asteroids – especially fitting given the recent successful NASA DART (or Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission toward the end of 2022. We’ll be speaking with astronomer Dr. Martin Elvis and diving into his book – Asteroids: How Love, Fear, and Greed Will Determine Our Future in Space – it’s a fascinating and informative read for anyone interested in learning more about how asteroids could influence the future of space exploration.
On today’s show we are joined by Dr. Martin Elvis.
Dr. Elvis is an astronomer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory which is a collaborative research effort alongside Harvard University and it is now known as the Center for Astrophysics. Dr. Elvis has obsessed for years over how supermassive black holes come to be seen as quasars, sources so bright that we see them out to the greatest distances and earliest times in the universe. For his PhD, Dr. Elvis discovered that quasars emit X-rays. And at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, using a fleet of space and ground based telescopes he mapped out the spectrum of quasars from X-rays to ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths, and was able to suggest their inner structures. Concerned about the growing expense of space telescopes, Dr. Elvis has turned to researching how astronomy is needed to enable asteroid mining. He has since published widely on issues related to asteroid mining and the space economy, law and ethics, and even has Asteroid 9283 Martinelvis named after him.
We also want to extend a big thank you to our sponsors this year for supporting our show!
Learn more about our Gold Sponsor Multiverse Media, an integrated media company focusing on space exploration, science, and technology, and check out their new title, Space Education: Preparing Students for Humanity’s Multi-Planet Future, aimed at teachers, academics, parents, entrepreneurs, and leaders by educator Mark Wagner.
Learn more about our Silver Sponsor the Colorado School of Mines Space Resources Program, a first-of-its-kind interdisciplinary program that offers Certificate, Master of Science, and Ph.D. degrees for professionals around the world interested in the emerging field of extraterrestrial resources here.
We hope that you enjoy this episode of Celestial Citizen Podcast! And if you feel like talking with some fellow space enthusiasts about what’s discussed in the episode, consider joining our Celestial Citizen community chat…
I loved this episode! I hope you'll have more people on like Dr. Martin Elvis--people who are interested in expressing rocket science for the rest of us plebs. The questions were also great. That was a great interview. I'm super impressed and looking forward to the next one!
Something that frustrates me a great deal are how politics seems to gunk up the work of government space science--a lot. How viable are private companies these days when it comes to space exploration? My sense of it is that there really aren't many who have the RnD and capital to really make it work--or at least to make it profitable. It's part of why I'm skeptical of us being out there in 30 years. I was thinking more along the lines of 50 to 80, mostly because the climate issues we're facing are going to suck up a lot of money until we figure out how to build for the world we've created and are creating. As it stands, the current world economy can't afford the onslaught of climate crises we are about to be facing--which makes me worried that space and money for it are going to end up further and further away--unless it's part of the defense industry and their budgets (at least here in the United States). Hence, again, my skepticism of anything happening quickly in the short term.
I'd also love to hear from some futurists like author William Gibson or others and get their takes on where we're at and where they see us going in the next 50 to 100 years. I just wish we'd prepare more for the things that are to come instead of always being, as Dr. Elvis mentioned, kind of realizing that our global resources to deal with crises can come up short when they're most needed. COVID showed that we have the capacity to respond to emergencies, but 3 years on and we're still recovering from the costs. How many more COVID's can we sustain before things just kind of collapse.
Anyway, I loved the hopefulness and the conversation. It shined a little ray of light into my dystopian vision of our futures, and I think we could all certainly use more of that. Thank you!