An extraordinary conversation about travel to the stars this week on planetary radio.

Welcome podcast listeners. I'm

I'm at Kaplan of the Planetary Society with more of the human

adventure across our solar system and beyond. Something unprecedented

today as we leave our regular format and possibly our

senses for a very special conversation about plausible

interstellar missions. My guests are UC Santa Barbara physicist Philip Lubin and his

former intern turned partner Travis Brasheirs. At a little more than an hour it is

the longest interview we've ever aired as part of the regular show.

Because of that, Bruce Betts and What's Up are moving to the head of the show with Emily

and Bill.

Let's get started with the Planetary Society's senior editor Emily Lockdawala.

Emily let's start with the hot one and it's a hot photo.

That's right we're talking about the hot planet Venus of course and an image from my blog that actually uses heat to see

Venus's clouds. You're looking at an image of Venus that is shot at a

wavelength of 2 and a quarter microns. And at that temperature, Venus's lower

atmosphere is blazing hot, radiating heat out into space, but some of that is

blocked by these very turbulent looking clouds. It's a really unusual image of Venus, part of a set that

Akiziki took and posted on the occasion of its first anniversary in orbit,

its first Venus anniversary, that is. We'll skip the third rock from the sun and go on out to

Mars and the surface of the red planet. Yeah fittingly for the summer both

rover's opportunity and curiosity are road tripping right now. Curiosity is put on

...