Of the house in 2011 that you would not be able to pass a budget. Is that likely given where we are in the process . Guest we have passed a budget every year in the 12 years we had it. I think we will get there. A budget is always the perils of pauline exercise. You get to the last minute and like pauline will be run over by the train, but it never quite happens. We are continuing to negotiate in good faith. I dont think the budget itself is likely to change very much. Its a matter of law and i think it has passed out of the Budget Committee. But there are some things that some of the folks that have concerns are interested in in terms of addressing entitlements and rules changes that will force us to deal with unauthorized appropriations. I actually think those are good things. Those are things that need to be dealt with. You have to count on the Leadership Team to get it done. Hopefully, they will. The Freedom Caucus has been making requests that seem fairly difficult to grand, saying they want ironclad assurances that ableof these cuts will be to be enacted into law. Guest we are asking things that are beyond the ability of the speaker and the leadership to promise. Sometimes people forget that we operate in the house of representatives. We do not have executive and legislative authority. There is no way that speaker ryan can commit to what the United States senate will do under its rules, let alone what the president will accept. I think sometimes people demand things that are unrealistic. There is a missa much we can do from one chamber. Much we canonly so do from one chamber. Congress is a pretty truncated calendar this year in part because of the president ial nominating convention. Lawmakers will be leaving earlier for the summer recess. Do you anticipate that will Mean Congress will need to pass a shortterm spending bill in september in order to take the threat of a Government Shutdown off the table before the 2016 election . Guest that is more likely than not. On appropriations, we are actually preceding a pace. We are not waiting on the budget, though it will be a lot easier if we get a budget done. The hearing schedule is complete and the first bill has been marked up in subcommittee. We will be ready to move bills, but that becomes a larger leadership decision. Did we think our congress is ready to pass them . Some of these bills will be bipartisan. We had a very serious debate. Milcon has been marked up for military construction and conventions and others are more controversial. Do you think of Hillary Clinton wins in november i know you would not like to see that but if Hillary Clinton wins in november, will that give democrats a stronger hand heading into the lame duck session when it comes to spending negotiations . Guest it probably does. Whoever wins in november, it strengthens your hand a little bit. We have a senate very much in the balance as to whether or not that would be republican. The morning after the election, each side will wake up and ask if it is smarter to relay or expedite the process. You would hope that whoever is going to be the next president that we do them a favor and actually have a functioning government running when they get there. They will have to deal with the debt ceiling in march as it is. Obviously, they will have to get their new team nominated and confirmed. They dont need to be worrying about writing a whole budget because we did not get our job done. I hope both sides will work together. We were able to do that last year and get the omnibus done for the first time in many years. The bills went through both the senate and the house committees of jurisdiction. We did not have the floor time we would have liked, but we at least have a product you could sit down and negotiate over. Congressman, you mentioned the senate hanging in the balance in november. Donald trump is the republican nominee, do you have concerns that could make it harder for republicans to control the senate and maybe even retain your House Majority . Guest i think he is very unpredictable. Frankly, i have seen him change numbers within the republican electorate in a way i would not have thought possible six months ago. If anybody tells you we nominate trump or cruz or whoever we will definitely win or lose, they have a lot better predictor than anybody has shown so far this year or they have just already formed their opinion. Its more likely to me that this campaign is in a very volatile political year. We have seen things i dont think anybody in january was predicting. I think we will wait and see. There is an argument to be made that trump will actually bring some voters out who have not been voting and move some elements of the historic Democratic Coalition to our side. Obviously, it will hurt in other areas, which is true of any candidate. I still think it will be a pretty close president ial election. I look back to 2008. I dont think politics works anymore where you can have a wipeout like we had a 1964 for we had in 1964, or like the democrats had in 1972. I go back to 2008 which was a volatile year, a terrible year for republicans with two unpopular wars, george bush at 30 Approval Rating and you throw in financial disaster 40 days before the election. It should have been a democratic wipeout. It was not a great year, but john mccain still got what today votes,e 180 electoral and carried over 20 states with 46 of the popular vote. The Republican Party was left Strong Enough to have a historic victory two years later. On eachthere is a base side. I dont think anybody we will nominate will put new york or california in play in the general election. Both sides seemed to have bases that are fairly secure. That was suggest to me that probably, that helps the house ifority, frankly, right now republicans retain that. Again, i think it will be very close. Know speakeryou ryan very well and have served with him for a long time in the house. He gave a big speech earlier talking about crying, actually about the state of Politics Today and talking about how Politics Today is full of angry rhetoric and we have seen some violence on the campaign trail at donald trump events. Do you think the speakers s peech will have any impact on the campaign as it is unfolding or will that speech fall on deaf ears . Guest frankly, it never hurts to appeal to the better angels of our nature, frankly. It is a reminder to members not to be caught up in the president ial rhetoric. You should not participate in that and try to elevate things a little bit. All the speaker can do is use a platform that he has got. I think he has done that awfully effectively. When he is saying that speech he thought was an appropriate, or ideas inconsistent with republican ideals like a ban on muslims are the careless rhetoric around david duke and the kkk he has been willing to step forward and say things. And i appreciate that and that has contributed to the softening we can see right now. Host we are talking about a potential trump candidacy. I am wondering if you share the opinion of some conservatives. Do you see a Trump Nominee as the death of the conservative movement in the United States . I have lived through the death of the conservative movement multiple times in my life. [laughter] i certainly have a great deal of respect for george will. He is a remarkable commentator, but there will always be a center right party. We may go through difficult times, but i have been around politically for a long time. As recently as 2009, we were told that the Republican Party is gone for a generation and two years later, it was back with the largest House Majority that it has had in the modern era. The parties show a remarkable ability to self correct and reform over time. I would suggest that that same thing will happen now. There is no question its a turbulent era. Do you think we are likely to get a contested convention in cleveland . Is there a possibility that House Speaker paul ryan might end up eating the nominee . He is saying no, but we have heard him say no to the speakership for instance, and then changed his mind. Guest let me break it into two parts. It is certainly more likely to have a contested nomination than in any other time in my lifetime. I have never say anything like now. Wellto remember as that the primaries are one thing and the delegate Selection Process is another. They are not necessarily connected. How people will vote in the first round or longer can be determined, but i have seen situations before and i would expect this to happen in my own home state. We were very closely contested. Ted cruz carried the state, but the delegate selection was 15 for senator cruz and 13 for senator rubio and 13 four donald trump. The Party Regulars are the ones running the process and we will choose district delegates in april. People, most of those are more likely to be for ted cruz, assuming he is still in the race, then they are for any other. They will pick up the rubio delegates, in my view and they are likely that the Trump Delegates will be trump voters on the first round, but if they are not trump people, they will move in another direction. That is happening in states across the country. I do think if you cant win it out right before you get there, i dont think anybody has it in the bag once you arrive. I think it will be very tumultuous. There will be multiple ballots. As for speaker ryan, i dont think he has a desire to be the president ial nominee. If he did, he would have run for it. Sometimes you can be a figure of destiny and he was very much that in the speakers race. He did not want to do it, but frankly, it became evident that he was really the only person, i inked, that could have united the conference and gotten us through the end of last year and gotten us up to a decent start this year. Andas already been vetted been on a national ticket. Millions of people have already voted for him in that regard. We know how he reforms. Person in there is a politics who does not like and respect paul ryan. Frankly, he does represent the kind of a vision and values as a republican, you would want to put forward. If we develop a chaotic situation at a convention, there is a chance that he or somebody else could emerge. Frankly, as a big paul ryan fan, i certainly would be happy to see Something Like that happened. Again, for it to happen, it literally has to happen on its own. We did see that in the speakers race. This is a much different, more complex process. If you think the house conference can be chaotic at times, just look at thousands of delegates from every state in the union. A lot of them never having been to a convention before showing up with various religions. If somebody emerges out of that, i dont know. I can envision the worst results than paul ryan, for sure. Might there not be some kind of popular result if he were voters acrossrump the country were frustrated . Guest again, the way to settle nominationwin the and that is the responsibility of the candidates actually seeking it. I will not speculate on whether there would be a revolt but you have to have a majority of the delegates. It is far more likely that donald trump or ted cruz, or maybe even john kasich, who have been through the process and have a base of delegates to start with and will enter the convention with operations already set up and they are already thinking about it. It is far more likely that one of the three of them will emerge. It is not as if it will be manipulated. Nobody is capable of manipulating this process. But if they deadlocked because the animosity between the candidates has become so great, it is pretty logical to look beyond them to try and find somebody thats more of a consensus figure. Paul ryan is somebody that i think has been fair in this process and has not tried to scheme. Why wouldnt you end up with somebody like that if the blogs were such that they could not find another person acceptable . That is exactly what happened in the republican conference. We had a number of talented potential people that could have been there, but there was only one person that everybody could really agree on. This is the person. That could happen again. If donald trump keeps marching along, but comes up 1237, isfrom the there a point where it is time for the party to rally behind him and call on john kasich as the spoiler to drop out of the race . Guest i dont think there is a party in that sense that can make that kind of decision. The moment to unite is the moment when somebody gets a majority of the delegates. You accept the process and you competed in the process. But you do have to get the majority. [laughter] it is not like horseshoes. Count in this business. You either win or lose. Its either that way on any election i have been part of. We know what is required to win, a majority of the delegates. If you can get that, i would hope anybody who lost except the outcome and support the winner. But if you dont get there, it is not as if you can say i dont have to go through the convention. You really do and you do need to get the majority. I dont think shortcircuiting the process would be wise either. I think you let it lay out. You let it play out. Host getting oil from president ial politics. Guest thank you. [laughter] tweeted before that Merrick Garland nominated for the Supreme Court that the senate does not have to act. From the Republican Party standpoint, is it advantageous to stall and not to have hearings or should they go forward with hearings and let the senate work it out . Are you concerned about having that vacancy longterm . Guest i am more concerned about who controls the court over the longer term. And look, when you or a house member, you are sort of getting in the senates business. I think Mitch Mcconnell has taken the right course. The senate has done the right thing, but this is pretty unprecedented in the final year and it is nobodys fault. It is not the president s fault fault. R the senates the court hangs in the balance. I think the American People have a right to express an opinion on this through a president ial election and its emerging as a president ial year. If the senate wants to hold hearings and want to meet individually, those are individual decisions they get to make, but i think they are wise to win until after the president ial election to make a decision. At that point, the new president i think probably the person who wakes of the day after that is the winner will be very happy that Mitch Mcconnell did what he did. Have seven minutes left. If that happens and a democrat wins the white house am a do you think republicans next january would be comparable confirming a potentially younger and more liberal Court Nominee . They would not be comfortable doing it. Democrats would say, just because you are nominated, does not mean you are accepted. The next president will have to be careful who they choose. There will be a political calculus there as well. If the Senate Changes control, republicans will have to rely on a filibuster. Democrats have shown they are willing to do that. Again, i think you wait to see what it is like. Once you have a president that is going to be there for four years and has the legitimacy of having won a national election, they deserve a lot of respect in terms of nominating. Again, the Supreme Court is different. Cabinet members are there only as long as the president is there. Supreme Court Nominees will be there for a long time. Obviously, that will push the ballots. I think the next president , i hope, will want somebody who heals the congress a little bit. These judicial battles have been very divisive and there will be a minority that the next president has to agree with whoever wins. I think the lesson in the last few years is, you better build these relationships early. This president did not do that over his first two years. He thought he had a coalition and an enduring democratic majority, but he had very few friends on the other side. That is at the root of the problems hes had legislatively. Earlier, you mentioned donald muslimsproposal to ban from the knighted states. Last year you called the proposal unamerican. After the recent brussels attack, ted cruz, the senator from texas, had his own proposal. Stepping up a by Law Enforcement officials of muslim communities in the United States. What you think of that idea . Guest it depends on what he meant. If we are talking about making sure weve got good intelligence and relationships and communications, thats appropriate. If youre talking about putting cops on the street and turning this into heavily policed areas, thats not the right thing to do. I choose to believe that he probably misspoke or what have you. We are very fortunate in this country. We have a Muslim Community that is well integrated and has contributed far beyond there is an iranian family who are devout muslims who are wonderful people in a very big contributor to our community. I dont think those kind of folks need scrutiny. They need to be lifted up and celebrated and praise. And praised. I would hope we avoid rhetoric like that. All of these guys just need to read the constitution. It is pretty clear. No religious test in the United States. It is our founding document and one of our great principles. It is why we can be as diverse as we are and have the lively public life that we have and still all celebrate these same values as americans. It is unfortunate anytime a president ial campaign puts that out there. It is one of the things i have been proudest about speaker ryan about. Thathe sees Something Like , he is willing to speak out and rely on americans and who we are in the values we live by. Host final questions . In dealing with Islamic State militants, do you think congress will at any point be able to pass a new authorization for the use of military force . Guest i hope so, i think we have been remiss. If you are a democrat and you didnt like george w. Bush, at least he came and thought the authorization for afghanistan and iraq. Thatpresident did not do in libya and has not done that in the Islamic State. I agree these are dangerous and we need to fight them, but we need to have a fullscale debate. We have shortcircuited the process. We did that in libya with disastrous results. We are doing it now. You dont know what the consequences will be down the line. But right now, essentially, the president of United States, by congressional inaction, has got the ability to wage war against anybody anywhere on the basis of authorizations that were passed before most members of congress were elected. I mean, i was not around in a 2001 or 2002 to vote on those authorizations. I should be held accountable for libya which way i voted. I should be held accountable for the Islamic State. I think its doable. You have to have the will to do it. The president frankly, should have had the decency and democrats did not want him to do it in august of 2014 because they were going into a tough election. He sort of woke up a few months later. By that time, you are already committed. He is telling them, i dont need this anyway, but it would be nice if you passed it. An excusablet of activity. I think we should have held a vote in august, 2014. A did not do that as majority. That is on us, but frankly, the president should have come in asked. Host a quick final question . In the wake of the brussels attack, we saw some action from congress after the paris attacks. Is there another roll for congress to play in this . Guest other than oversight and making sure we learn the appropriate lessons from brussels and that we are alert, i dont know if there is a lot to do. This is a nato country. We have wonderful relationships with belgium and we grieve for what happened and we need to offer them every assistance possible. Im sure thats being done, quite frankly. There is no partisanship when it comes to situations like this. Pelosi was critical didhe fact that congress not meet for the zika virus before the recess. Guest in this case, we have told the administration and there is a lot of unobligated money. Ebola, it, like for will be spent over a period of many years. We have a list of questions to the administration to try to get a better handle on the amount of money they are asking for. They have not yet had a chance to respond to that. Its been about 10 days. I know secretary burwell is within the jurisdiction of my committee and so is dr. Collins of the National Institute of health and they are terrific people. We have a serious problem but weve got the means to deal with it in the short term and we need to come back with a real authorization. Just throwing up a piece of paper and not giving people a chance to ask questions, i think is a mistake. Get there,ink we can but i doubt it will be in exactly the form the administration requested or the exact amount of money. A group of us were in south america, including chairman rogers, and we met with the cdc in brazil. We are having dialogues and looking at this. But demanding that we hang around when they have the resources they need in the shortterm to do whatever they want to do, we have made it apparent we will be supported. I think that is politicizing the virus in a way that is unfortunate. Host we covered a lot of ground, thank you so much. After ourers is back questions with tom cole. He is a member of the Budget Committee and rules. Wongquestionnaires, scott long of the hill. Lets start with the budget. He was fairly optimistic that the budget process would work for congress this year. Is that what you are hearing when you are in the halls of congress . I am a skeptical that House Republicans can pass their own resolution this year. It seems there is internal resistance and no democrats will vote for it. That seems like a pretty big lift to me. That said, there is really no consequence if they dont pass a budget. This bipartisan budget agreement in place that they reached last fall, just as former House Speaker john boehner was on his way out. We already know there is a bipartisan agreement in place. And as the congressman noted, it seems fairly likely they will just pass some kind of shortterm spending measure in september to avoid any possibility of a shot down. Host scott wong, the conservative Freedom Caucus was part of john weiners demise. I was paul ryan doing in his relations with his group i think the relations have been pretty good. Speak ryan has spent a lot of time trying to woo the Freedom Caucus members. Jimchairman of the group, jordan, was invited to a weekly meeting in his office. He holds dinners with some of the Freedom Caucus members when they are in session. He has restored some of the members who had been booted off committees by Speaker Boehner and put them back on committees. He has made an effort to reach out to this group. However, in terms of the budget, there is still an impasse with where the Freedom Caucus wants to go with it and where leadership wants to go. The Freedom Caucus once the budget numbers to be pushed lower. Leadership wants those numbers to remain where they are. Host would you also comment about the relationship between the house and senate under the new speaker . Relationships were nonexistent under Speaker Boehner. A jointlicans had retreat, but you dont really see house and Senate Republicans on the same page yet. House republicans are suggesting to the senate to get rid of pesky rules and Senate Republicans dont want to do that. You see some agreements on big policy issues, but when it comes to actually working chambers seemtwo to be at odds. Host on the president ial campaign, because mr. Cole has an interesting perspective, what did you hear from him today . The big thing that struck me were his very favorable comments about speaker ryan as a possible dark or some money as a insible dark horse nominee the event of a contested convention. I think you are hearing that from a lot of republicans who are disenchanted with the candidates currently available, specifically donald trump and ted cruz. While its certainly a long shot, i think our republicans out there, maybe including tom cole who are secretly hoping for this to end u in a bigp sted a big content convention was paul ryan as the dark horse nominee. Host he said the prospects are as good as he is seen them in as many years in politics. He suggested donald trump does not have the requisite number of delegates, anything could happen. Host it will be interesting to watch over the next couple of months. Thank you for being our guest on the newsmakers this week. Thank you. Thank you. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] discussion focuses on standardized test day and how it is used to measure student performance and create accountability among colleges and universities. That is live at 10 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan. Later in the day, the Carnegie Endowment hosts a form on the Iran Nuclear Agreement and how implementation of the deal compares to other Nuclear Agreements from the past. That is live at 2 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. Starting monday on cspan, the Supreme Court cases that shaped our history come to life with the cspan cas series landmark cases. The 12 part series explores the significant dramas in american history. John marshall said, this is different. The constitution is a political document. Except that the political structures, but it is also a law and if it is a law, we have the courts to tell us what it means. Ultimatethe antipresident ial case. It is exactly what you dont want to do. Who should make the decisions about those debates . Ner versus new york, the Supreme Court said it should make those decisions. Now, nasa Planetary Science director james green outlines the future of space expiration, encoding plans to send humans to mars by 2030. Hell for talks about other projects and what is being discovered about distant planets. This is an hour and a half. [applause] thank you all for coming. We got an email at 10 30 in the morning saying that our guest was not coming. But then i was excited about who was coming. Charlie is a great guy, but he is an administrator. Administrators are very cautious. He knows the science, but not like jim green. When we are looking we watch nasa press conferences and we wait until he speaks so we can get a soundbite for our radio program. Because he is the one that says Something Interesting every time. It is really a delight to have you with us. Yeah, so we are going to talk about planets and Planet Science and it is going to be cool, but we should start. Judging by everybodys reaction, how many people have seen the martian. Ok. I will give you the brief list of outlines. There is a guy who gets stuck on mars and he has to live because his crewmates take off and they think he is dead, but he is not. I dont know, can i spoil the movie . I think you can. What happens to him is quite thisesting, but what makes movie so remarkable is they really engaged people like tim the green to get science right. Except for one thing, and jim what a tell us what they got wrong . James green there are a few, but the one glaring problem of course, is the storm. The movie opens and there is a dust storm. Markthe and his team and his team are deploying experiments. Marcus picking up samples on mars definitely the kind of thing we will be doing with the mars 2020 mission. That, there doing that bac Weather Report on mars is updated and a huge dust storm is coming in. What is great about that is we can actually do that Weather Report. We have global circulation models of mars of the temperature and pressure distribution over the entire planet that based on the data we are getting from our orbiters, we can actually do that in near realtime. So, even that is quite accurate. But what is not accurate of course, is the dust storm is worse than anything you saw from lawrence of arabia. It isessure is so low, about 1 of our own pressure on earth. And even though the winds can go 125 miles per hour, it can be really brisk, but it is not enough to straighten an American Flag sitting on the surface. Sorry. You may not have realized that. It is very be nine in that tense, but it is very benign in that sense, but it is very crippling from an atmospheric perspective. It can go very high. At noon, it may look like midnight and it can get very dark. One other thing that we found that i did mention to ridley and his team that was not any book, nor have they planned to put it in the movie, was that recently we have been observing these orms whereh dust st the dust can get charged and discharged. We have seen after the storm goes away, these Lightning Strikes on the ground. They are dark, spidery looking things. There he looking, unless you are down there at the time. Also, we are now seeing from or bit, we catch a little brightness as we sweep the camera by. We saw an area that was bright because it had a Lightning Strike at the time. And then in the next image it is not there. So, we know it is occurring. We dont know the distribution or how strong it is. We know virtually nothing about it, but it is one of those new things that we actually got into the movie a little bit. Was wondering and we were speculating about this. If a dust storm was not enough to cause them to abort the mission and that is why everybody else takes off and he gets stuck there we were tried to think of whether there is anything else that might be severe enough . Quakes . E mars james green a very good question. We know mars is it shaking and we know that because we have an imager that can actually see this table from orbit if it was sitting on mars. We have caught avalanches as they are occurring. So, we dont know how active mars is, or whether those avalanches are because it is still a very active planet, like the earth is, or its from me to toric impact. We get impacted all the time. We get about 10 times of metoric material coming into the atmosphere every day. On mars, the atmosphere is so thin that a lot of it will make it to the surface. Most of what we received burns off. We will all more about this once we launch the mission called insight. That was designed to do a couple things. One, was to deploy a size monitor. It is the most sensitive size monitor we have built on this earth. It is more sensitive than anything we have deployed and it is so sensitive it will be able to not only feel mars and whether it can have a quake on its own, but the impacts. And it will observe those reflections of sound waves that travel through the rocks. We will understand the core size, perhaps whether it is molten or not. The mantle size. It will be the only other planet, besides earth, as a terrestrial set that we will understand that well. From a human exploration perspective, it will be important to know how active mars is for humans Walking Around on the surface. Some of the places they might want to go for protection are collapsed lava tubes. We have found a number of them from orbit. What is a lava tube . James green like here on e volcanoesave o that spew molten material out. It canverything cools, actually create a vacated tube. We have found those on mars. Hugehas a huge, several volcanoes. Large thath is a so if it were on earth, it would take of the state of missouri. The whole state. Volcano uge book i then, there is the sources ridge. And around the area we found a lot of lava tubes. We see that by taking the data from a pyrites of our spacecrafts the data from a variety of spacecrafts and put it on the web. Many kids and High School Students and College Students look at the data. Tube wasirst law bulava found by a High School Student. It was really great. The material formed a little ramp. The lighting was perfect. If i was there i could drive write down in it. That might be it area where froms might be easily safe a lot of the problems that exist on mars that we dont have here on earth, in terms of its radiation. I want to ask about that, but what about active volcanoes . James green we have not found any. We are on the look for them. Mars at a certain resolution, not High Resolution. As i mentioned, even though we could see this table from orbit and the mars reconnaissance orbiter with the instrument has been operating for 10 years weve only observed about 3 of the surface of the High Resolution. We there is a lot of mars have not seen at really High Resolution. And the tremendous discovery that that instrument made just this last year were on these greater walls. We find it during the summer streaks of material on these greater walls. We have known it now for many years, several years. They come and go. They all happened during the summer when the face of the and thatthe sun gets the maximum energy from the sun and then we see these streaks. As we began to see more and more of them, we could only see them with the High Resolution image or because they are about the length of this room in terms of width. But the length is a couple football fields long. They are really long and we call them reoccurring slopes. That is a scientific term mean ing these are lines you cant see unless you have the highresolution imager. Once we started to see them, we started looking for them and now we are finding them all over the place. The best result that came from that occurred last year when we thatlly got one big enough our instrument could take a good look at it and say, what is that material . Now, why is it dark like it is . Why is it forming streaks . It turns out that it is water. That means liquid water is flowing on mars. These craters are literally weeping during the summer. So, there are two basic theories. Fromirst theory is, curiosity we are measuring all kinds of humidity. Could haverk actually gotten Water Resources a lot easier than blowing himself up, as he did. [laughter] extract the water out of the atmosphere because there is actually a fair amount of humidity in the atmosphere. Because we know that. As part of that hydrological cycle. One of the ideas is, well, the only way you can have liquid water on the surface at these times during the year, even though the temperature is high, the pressure is really low. You shouldnt have liquid water on the surface unless it is briny water. Of indeed, on the slopes these craters are a lot of briny material. So, the concept is, maybe that material is pulling it out of the air. That was an ok theory for a while, until we found more and more. And then we did it because chelations it is all about the math and the movie got that right. And then you find out there are far more of these than there is total humidity in the atmosphere. So, you need to add water somewhere. And so, now the prevailing theory, the second theory that has come out, is probably the one that is right. They are coming from underground aquifers. Water resource underneath it surface, we believe. So, what is happening is there is an ice plug in the aquifer and as the sun heats that, if the bladet sublimate it. That eventually breaks through and the water pours down. This is really exciting because we had always thought that the water table, as you got closer to the equator, was much deeper. It may be as low as 15 kilometers below the surface. And now it looks like it is within a few meters of the latitudes Like Washington dc and above, right at the surface, a nice little water layer. As you did closer to the equator, it might be tens of meters, but not 15 kilometers. So, mark could have gone to what we would probably call a well. The challenge with the well is he might have liquid water down there, but as you pull it out, it will get colder and colder. How do you keep it liquid . But that is engineering, right . What mark did not know if there is a greater closer to him than pathfinder is where it is weeping during the summer. And that is a new discovery. I did not know andy he is the author. James green he is the author of the original book. He started it in about 2007 order thousand eight, maybe 2009. 2007 or 2008, maybe 2009. He has tons of Science Fiction at home. He would try a few things and he wrote a book that did not do very well and in that business home runnt make the with the first book, you dont get up to back again. He started writing this as a serial and put up the first chapter. He had up to 3000 people he said, initially looking at his website. So, when he put it out, these people would make comments on it and say, this is kind of cool. He put out another one and another one. At the end of the process after about 32 chapters, he had the book. It is all right there, but he had people who wanted to read it on their kindle, ok . And they did not know how to download a pdf and there were different chapters. So, andy contacted amazon. He took the material he needed created a book in kindle form that you then could read. He then put it on amazon. The problem was, he had to sell it. He could not give it away. They forced him to sell it for . 99. Amazon got . 70. Wordofmouth put it in the top 10 Science Fiction ebooks. That is when it was noticed by a publisher. They contacted andy and they said, i think you need an agent. Let me be your agent. We will give you a book deal. We will go from electronic to hard copy. That sounds backward, but that is how it went. And then audiobook and then we will translated to chinese, and whatever other languages they had in mind. He said, ok sure. And the very next weekend, fox called him and they wanted to buy the movie rights to the book. And with that, Everything Else happened rapidly. And now, andy is no longer a computer programmer. [laughter] a great story. James green actually, that was my disaster scenario. Ey parked the lander at the base of a hill and they could tell he was warming up and it could blow any second. Been too what is the name of that volcano in scotland, i mean iceland that nobody can pronounce the name of . I still cant say it. Ff, when it blows the lid o not just lava, but water comes flowing down. Im going to help andy on this next book. Because it is so acidic, or salty, they could come down and cause havoc. They dont know how far the water will come down. You couldnt actually, we dont know enough about mars at that level to say that would be ruled out. [laughter] you might be able to make it after all. Here is something i want to pursue about these High School Students who are looking at pictures of mars. , happily my children are no longer in high school. So, they will not be doing this. But i am still curious, how do you connect to the student with the picture and the knowledge to lava tube . Ight be a somebody is telling somebody how to look at it. James green in this country and other countries, we have highly motivated kids where their knowledge for science is almost insatiable. We work very hard to be able to put a variety of material out on the web for them to get access t. We have some really fabulous websites where they can actually look at the latest imaging. Steve squires, who is the project scientist our top scientist for the opportunity rover, the one that has been on mars roving around for more than 11 years he loves to come in first thing in the morning and see what the kids have done. Whense what they will do the data comes down there will be an image here and an image there with different resolutions. These kids will take those and create a mosaic and stitch it together and they know the attitudes and the resolutions and how to match them well, the descriptions are there. And they have the tools to do th at now. It is just comes in, like he has got it on huge screens and he it is like a Movie Theater and he just walks onto mars. That is when they start, wow, lets investigate this area and get a higher resolution image of that. Now, that is part of what they do. We put it on the web as fast as we can. I have actually talk to a High School Student who is in the running to pick the next landing site for mars 2020. You know this kid . James green i do. He is 15 i think now. James green when he started he was 14. It is amazing. He has a very thorough explanation of why we should go back to the landing site was it opportunity . James green yes. It is just amazing. So, here is what we did. James green on mars 2020 we had a set of objectives. We wanted to go to a geologically diverse, but ancient region of mars that hasnt changed in 3. 5 billion years. That is where curiosity is right now. That is when mars was actually much more like birth. I much more like earth. It had a deep ocean. It had rain, clouds, ice, snow, the works. When you haverth, that kind of water, there can be life. We are looking at regions that have not changed in 3. 5 billion years that we could actually go to on mars to see how perhaps, life started on mars. We can find those rocks anymore. Ied all those with our plate tectonics and the biosphere. So, we put out those requirements to everyone in the community and that is typically our science people, but you can apply, as anyone can, to these digests and look at what comes out. And alex did. Community toience say, here are the requirements. Find us a place of mars that satisfies those. Come prepared to be able to argue your case. For us to see how that goes, we put in a couple page abstract, what your arguments were, and that location. And alex did. The organizing committee was looking at the abstracts etc. And is was fabulous, just as good as any of the other scientists. We did that because we wanted to see how many scientists were picking similar locations and if they did, we would group them. We would say, here is your team. Alex ended up as a member of a science team and they were so him, heed with presented to the entire Science Group when we had our meeting. Great. Is doing he can have my job later. There was another meeting. I dont know if this comes under your purview, but there was a human landing site. Why are we looking at human landing sites . James green why are we doing that . We are going mars to need high imaging because we are going to need to land in a region that is safe. When humans go to mars, there will be places where they can set up. They will be some resources they are going to want. They are going to want to know where the water is. They are going to want to know how to extract oxygen out of the atmosphere. They are going to want to know where the methane vents are. They are going to want to be able to get access to certain minerals that they can grind up and use in their 3d printer to fix anything that they want to. Alright . That is what they are going to want and what we want as scientists are some excitin g locations all around for them to be able to go and make samples, look at the history of mars. Like here on earth, the geological strata of how the earth evolved, we want to do that on mars. So, went every going to do it . If humans are going to go in the 20 30s and 20 40s, what we have a lot of time. The answer to that is no. I have a highresolution imager that can do the job that has been up there 10 years. It will only last another six years and if we dont pick the site and get the highresolution imaging and the highresolution mineralogy, we yearsing to be 1520 behind the times. We worked with human declaration to come up with defining the region interest is called exploration zone and it is about 100 kilometers in diameter. The rovers will look like what they look like an the martian because they are modeled after our mock ups already. We have a rover that looks a little bit like what they put together. And so, they are going to land in one spot in this 100 kilometer area. They are going to do science in other areas. We listed the requirements and send that out to the community. And we got a tremendous response. We got well over 50 sites, for which alex supported, just like we did in 2020. We met and it was tremendously stimulating. We recognize that there is a huge disparity of knowledge between what the scientists know and what the engineers think they know about mars. For which we need to get them up to where we are. Like to think the engineers no past. No best the engineers will to sign will design things. They didnt know methane was on mars. I will give you an example, when i was working with him on exploration, i got invited to go to talk about mars to the astronauts. They said you have a halfhour talk, come on in, talk about a. Ew things here are all the things we have been doing on youtube. All these great talks. Heres what we are doing on station