Dr Tyson is an American astrophysicist, author and science communicator. Since 1996, he has been the Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Centre for Earth and Space in New York City. He also served on a 2001 government commission on the future of US aerospace industry and on the 2004 Moon, Mars and Beyond commission and was awarded the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal in the same year.
Dr Tyson is an advocate for expanding the operations of NASA, arguing that the public has a tendency to overestimate the space agency’s budget.
In 2017 he was interviewed by Larry King, where he was pressed on why NASA needs more support and how they can achieve their goals.
He admitted: “We have no idea how much we don’t know in any real terms.
“However, we look out in the universe and we look at all of the forces that are driving what is going on.
“We actually can quantify how much of that we know and it’s about four percent.
“In other words, there are phenomena going on in the universe that to this day stumps us.
“And if you add up all the stumping phenomena in the cosmos and this amounts to the dark matter.”
Dr Tyson went on to reveal some shocking statistics.
He added: “We don’t know, 85 percent of all the gravity in the universe has a source about which we know nothing, we call it dark matter.
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“I don’t want to like boldly go where hundreds have gone before, driving around the block like the Space Shuttle.
“It would be fun to see Earth, but I’d rather wait until we can actually go somewhere – take me to Mars.
“Just to put this in context, if I take a schoolroom globe and ask you, relative to that size, how far is the Space Station?
“It’s three-eighths of an inch.
“And somehow we’re all convinced that it’s space – no – not to me, not to an astrophysicist.”
Inspired by the thought, Mr King asked Dr Tyson when he believed NASA would get to Mars.
He admitted: “There are only two ways we can get to Mars – one is if China says they want to put military on Mars – we’d be there in 10 months.
“One month to design, build and engineer the spacecraft, nine to get there.
“You don’t want war to be the driver, even though that’s what got us to the Moon, the Russians were our threat and the Moon was the new high ground.
“So another completely noble goal, at least in capitalist culture, you do it because there can be a strong economic return.
“We were reactive to what Russia did, not proactive.”