Miniverse

It's hard to imagine just how big space is

so let's make it easier.

What if you could get from one end of the solar system

to the other by driving?

Because space is so huge, we're bringing it down to Earth

by scaling the distances in our solar system

down to the size of the continental United States

and placing the planets along our route.

It's a 3.6 billion mile road trip

shrunk down to under 3,000 miles.

My name's Colonel Chris Hadfield.

When I was nine years old, I saw the impossible happen.

The eagle has landed.

And from that moment forward,

I wanted to make the impossible happen for me

and to turn myself into an astronaut.

We have ignition and liftoff

for the space shuttle, Endeavor.

I've been a mission specialist

on a space shuttle, the commander of

the International Space Station.

All told, I've logged almost 4,000 hours in space.

I've flown through it, I've walked in it,

I've even sung in it.

But now, I'm driving it.

Our road trip across the solar system starts here

on Long Island, New York.

That's the sun off the northeast coast.

It's 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit on the surface.

That's like 40 times hotter than my NASA spacesuit

was designed for but I'm going somewhere

a little bit cooler.

On this journey, I'll be joined by some amazing people,

riding shotgun and guiding my adventures.

So, it's time to pick up my first passenger.

Come on in.

Hey man, how ya feel? How are ya?

It's a pleasure. It's world-renowned

astro-physicist, Michio Kaku,

of the City University of New York.

That's right, I've heard so much about you.

Oh, I've heard lots about you, as well.

You serenade the masses from outer space, right?

And I've been watching all the stuff you do from afar.

Think it'll be nice to have a little look at the world

and the universe together.

Grand tour of the solar system.

The first leg of my journey

will take us through the inner solar system to Mars.

Mars has always held a grip on my imagination

and we're getting tantalizingly close to the day

when an astronaut will actually step down

onto the red planet but there are many other wonders

along the road from the sun.

Look, there it is, Mercury, the first planet from the sun.

Mercury is an average of 36 million miles from the sun

but here in the Miniverse, it's just 24 miles down the road.

It looks a little like the moon,

which is a place I've always wanted to go.

Many people think that,

"Well, being on Mercury is very similar"

"to being on the moon."

No, if you were an astronaut,

the sun is a huge fireball lighting up the sky,

dominating everything you see around you.

It would be quite a hostile environment with the sun

just literally staring you in the face.

And it's blisteringly hot on the surface.

It's 800 degrees Fahrenheit.

Imagine being able to bake a pizza in your back porch

without an oven.

But Mercury also has some surprises.

You realize that there's ice on Mercury?

Like water ice?

Water ice, right.

It turns out if you go to the poles,

the North Pole and the South Pole,

and look at the bottom of craters

where you have permanent shadows,

we think there's evidence of water ice.

So, even that close to the sun,

there are places that are permanently in the dark?

That's right, this shocked a lot of scientists

who had this image of Mercury being this hell-hole.

Beyond Mercury, we chart a course for Venus.

In the universe, it's about 31 million miles,

which means in the Miniverse,

Venus is only about 20 miles away.

Venus and the Earth are almost the same size.

For a long time, astronomers thought Venus

was a kind of twin sister to our planet

but apparently, it's Earth's evil twin.

You know, when I was a kid, I read science fiction novels

that said that astronauts of the future

will vacation on Venus, they'll have tropical environments,

swim in the oceans of Venus.

Boy, were they wrong.

Tropical environments,

I think that was a bit of an understatement.

Temperatures approach 900 degrees on the surface of Venus.

That's hotter than Mercury.

Yeah, and it rains sulfuric acid

and the atmosphere is so think, the pressure is so great

on the surface of Venus, it's like being half a mile

underneath the water in the ocean.

Wow, so that's like being way, way underwater

with the pressure of the water all around you.

Yeah, even submarines, submarines would be crushed

like an eggshell at that depth.

You know, here on the planet Earth,

we experience pressure on our skin,

15 pounds per square inch on your skin.

On Venus, it's 1,500 pounds of pressure per square inch.

So, it's sort of like in a spaceship

when the engines light and you're crushed back in your chair

except it's crushing you from all directions,

not just from one side.

Right, so if you're an astronaut walking on Venus,

you'd be crushed like an eggshell.

I make a great tour guide, huh?

Maybe not such a good salesman, though, I'm not sure.

You should not be selling real estate on Venus.

I'm selling Mars, actually.

Ah, here we are.

Who would have thought that this jewel

hanging there in the sky is bright

because of sulfuric acid droplets?

And yet, we've built spaceships

that have made it all the way to the surface, right?

Just for a few minutes and then they got fried.

So, it's the hottest planet in the solar system

and sulfuric acid is raining from the sky.

That's right, so if I was a tour guide,

I'd say maybe we should skip Venus this year.

As we leave Venus,

we're headed for the only planet I've actually orbited

as an astronaut and the inner planets are so close

to each other that to get there,

we still won't be leaving Long Island.

I think you're gonna recognize our next destination.

It's terra firma,

It's our own world.

Home sweet home.

Yeah, we take it for granted, right?

Yeah. Most of the universe

is quite hostile, all these planets

that are blisteringly hot or freezing cold.

It's great to find one that's just right

to have life on it.

And there's my old home away from home,

the International Space Station.

I spent five months there,

taking in the view every single moment I could.

And look, you can also see

the northern lights and the southern lights.

Beautiful, I've had the great privilege

of seeing the aurora in a way only a handful of people have.

I was outside on a space walk,

it was on the dark side of the Earth.

Of course, I would just be happenstance,

just outside doing a space walk.

I had my lights shut off,

my eyes had adjusted to the darkness

and we went into the southern lights,

the Aurora Australis.

They were rippling between my legs and pouring by.

They're mostly like green and red

as you've seen in the pictures but in them,

you get all of the little subtle colors, as well.

I couldn't convince myself even though I knew it was real,

it was just hard to somehow accept the fact

that this amount of gorgeous, pulsating light and color

could be a natural, real thing.

It was one of the most magnificent experiences of my life.

Plus, we're going five miles a second,

so it's almost like if you watched the surf crashing

on the shore but then you're skimming through it

on a board so you get your own added speed,

like a surfer on a wave, makes it even more magnificent.

It's just...

Well, that's the title of your next book,

Surfing on the Aurora.

Maybe you're a better travel agent than I thought,

surf the aurora, I like that.

Well, I've left Earth before

and I'm doing it again

and this is a journey I've dreamed about many times,

from Earth to Mars, a world that has the best chance

of becoming humanity's next home.

Even when Mars is closest to us in its orbit,

traveling there on a spaceship

will take between six and nine months.

In the Miniverse,

it's just down the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

Sounds like a quick trip but in the Miniverse,

we have to deal with rush hour.

So, how soon do you think until it's not just robots

going there but people?

Well you know, going to the moon was a piece of cake.

Three days you're on the moon.