Many months ago, I went over to the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech to record this episode of Spaceship Spitzer. I played a (hopefully) humorous semi-parody of myself, and I also did the voice for the robot called Irwin. What I didn't know until I saw this yesterday was that Amy Okuda, who plays Tinkerballa on The Guild, was also in this (because we didn't work at the same time.)
Hey guess what? If you have a pair of those red and blue 3D glasses, you can also watch it in 3D, which I understand is all the rage among the damn kids today.
I'm super proud of this video, and I'm honored to be part of something like this, because it makes science accessible to younger people, while making it entertaining for them and for adults. You'll notice that I didn't say "makes science cool," because I believe that science already is cool.
I hope that programs like Starship Spitzer will do for today's children what series like Cosmos and guys like The Star Hustler did for me when I was a kid: get me excited not just about what's out there, but helped me experience the thrill of exploring and understanding it.
Listen, do me a favor: go outside tonight, and look up at the moon. While you do that, consider this inspirational line from last night's Big Bang Theory, (which I'll paraphrase because I can't find it online): Our species went to the moon and left evidence of our visit there, just sixty years after barely achieving flight. Which goes like this: "...there are man-made objects on the moon, put there by a member of a species that only 60 years before had just invented the airplane." (Thanks, karohemd!)
We have to understand our universe. We have to know what's out there. I think we have to keep looking up, and we have to keep exploring, because if we keep screwing up our own planet in the relentless pursuit of even more money for jerks who could don't care about the rest of us, we're going to need someplace to go.
