Interview
HIW’s Charlie Evans speaks to broadcaster Dallas Campbell about his new book and his passion for space exploration
We speak to Dallas Campbell about his new book
As a presenter on programmes such as The Gadget Show, Horizon, Stargazing Live and Bang Goes the Theory, Dallas Campbell’s career has taken him all over the world. Along the way he has abseiled off the world’s tallest building, dived through the sewers of Mexico City and witnessed Tim Peake’s launch to the International Space Station. His new book, Ad Astra: An Illustrated Guide to Leaving the Planet, explains all you need to know about the trials and trivia of life off-Earth.
Your book takes a unique approach, what made you want to write it in this style?
I didn’t want to just write the bumper book of space facts. There are so many books like that and I actually wanted to do something completely different and make something more complete, more with an arch, with things set up in Act 1 that maybe reappear in Act 3.
Is that your screenwriting background?
A little bit. For me writing isn’t just noting facts down on a bit of paper. I knew what I roughly wanted to do: I had a rough structure with the concept of doing a guide book, and go from there.
It’s visually spectacular. How did you decide on the imagery?
Sourcing pictures was the toughest thing. I’d stumble across pictures on the internet and try to find who owned them - it was a bit of work. It wasn’t just ‘Let’s find some pictures’, I wanted the pictures to jump out. It’s curated.
How long did this take you to write?
It was exactly a year from ‘I’m going to write a book’ to today, so the actual writing was probably seven months, and there is a heck of a lot of research. There are things I already knew, but for the stuff I didn’t know, for each subject there is libraries worth of information about that thing. You have to know everything to be able to distil it down into a couple of pages.
How did you distil it down?
I’ve been filming a lot this year, two big series that have taken me around the world, and I’ve been travelling a lot, so it’s been hard to keep track of a lot of information. The best source for me, the most satisfying source, was the British Interplanetary Society Library. It’s behind Vauxhall station, this building with big letters on the wall that say British Interplanetary Society. I’ve known about it for years and I always thought that it was some kind of cult! But inside they have thousands and thousands of books about the whole history of space travel… on every conceivable subject, flight logs for every Apollo mission, photographs, it’s absolutely jam packed. Actually writing was quite hard, because I was so distracted by new information. My goal was to take that whole library, squash it and put it in a single volume.
You include very practical issues that I never considered would be a problem.
That’s the thing — I like the practical stuff, I like the niche, weird, practical side. I have got a whole section on the flag that they stuck on the Moon and how they made it and the engineering behind it, and the fact the flag cost $5.50 from Sears. To me this is interesting, the details — this is stuff people genuinely don’t know about. All of these stories people have written about before — I’m not doing anything particularly new, but packaging them all together in one place I think is really nice.
The questions throughout the book, like ‘Can we take a dog to space?’ are almost childlike, yet it works really well.
There is so much to do with leaving the planet, it’s not just about being an astronaut. Quite often there is bureaucracy, like do you need a passport? No is the answer.
What made you decide to write it this way?
Science writing tends to be ‘this is science’ and then separately there is literature, and I wanted to do something really creative, a bit different and a little more thoughtful. For me science is about stories. It’s the same for television. Why do I want to write about space? It’s because there is a good story, and good people, and within the story are little sub-stories which are fascinating. And science is just how we explore the world and space is just a bit more than that — but it’s not much more than that.
In particular we really enjoyed the story about the women who made the Apollo space suits.
The most famous photograph ever taken off Earth, Buzz Aldrin standing on the Moon, which is certainly the most famous photo of the 20th century, but when you look at it — which nobody realizes and which really frustrates me — you’re not looking at Buzz Aldrin, you’re looking at an engineered object, that space suit. It’s the International Latex Corporation, A7L spacesuit. So I wanted to champion the suit and the women who stitched them. They were from Delaware, and before that they had been stitching suitcases and garments and boxing gloves. They were just highly skilled individuals and that’s a really nice thing to talk about. Sewing is this ancient craft we have been doing since the Stone Age and here we are employing it to build a space suit.
“You don’t have to play the piano to like listening to music, yet somehow science has its own special rules. It’s ridiculous”
Do you have a favourite story in there?
I like the integrated space plan, which was quite an early infographic. In 1989 a space engineer called Ron Jones created this infographic listing what we need to do to become an interplanetary species. So he charted all the things that we would need — things that needed to happen, manned vehicles and so on — in this incredible diagram. That’s my favourite at the moment. I also really love the interviews. Partly from being bored of my own voice, I’d think ‘I need someone else to tell me this’, so I would bring in people like Beth Healy who lives in Antarctica for months on end and analogues space missions in complete isolation in -80 degrees in the dark, and the artist who bred geese as an art project to reflect the Moon geese from the 1600s — I think that is a really interesting story.
Moon geese?
There was a book called L’Homme dans la Lune (The Man on the Moon) in the 1600s, whereby they imagined these special geese called ganzer that would migrate from the Earth to the Moon, and if you could catch them somehow and tie yourself to them off you would go to the Moon. An artist decided to breed geese and imprinted them and named them all after astronauts — Neil, Svetlana, Gonzalez — she had this Moon goose colony and did this incredible series of photographs and little films, and I just loved it.
Did you always want to be a science communicator?
I always struggle with the notion science communicator. What does that mean? You don’t say history communicator, or art, music — why is science different? You say science and they think of it as a subject. I don’t, it’s just telling stories. There is no distinction. I’m just interested in things, interested in nature, how the world works. I suppose the area that I am most known for is human geography, things like humans and planets and where they meet — transport, energy and cities — those sorts of areas which fascinate me, of which space is part of that. It was not a case of ‘I’m now going to do science’. My problem with the term ‘science communicator’ is it automatically assumes — let us communicate to those who don’t understand the world of science. If you want science to truly be part of culture, then stop calling it science communication. You don’t have to play the piano to like listening to music, yet somehow science has it’s own special rules, which is ridiculous.
Like you said, people find it inaccessible.
I think it’s because there is an assumption that when we talk about science one has to be a scientist. If you want to be a musician, for example, you need to learn how to play an instrument, or read music, but that doesn’t exclude those who want to listen to music or enjoy talking about music. It’s the same with science. We need science because it makes the world go around, but within science there is that natural story and that natural curiosity about how things work, which is why good science writing should be as respected as any other kind of writing. It takes you places, like any kind of writing, it’s poetic, and there is wonder and beauty, and visually it’s amazing. You read the works of great science writers, people like Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins — who I think is a great science writer — and you are transported as if you were reading any other kind of book.
Do you think there may be a stereotype of science being elitist?
I used to do a TV show called Bang Goes the Theory, which is like this family science show. We had such a good time because we were covering all different areas of science and we were talking to the general public and it’s not about being scientifically literate, it’s about being interested. It’s just this idea that science is somehow just the thing you did at school. When we talk about English or music or art, you don’t see it as ‘that thing you did at school’. You don’t say to someone ‘Let’s go to a concert’ and they reply ‘I hate music, I was really bad at it at school’. Nobody says that, yet science is [described in that way]. I’m trying to break down that wall and get rid of all of that and trying to just normalise science. I’m trying to give people permission to enjoy it and not question it and not go ‘Oh, I was rubbish at science at school’. In the book all of the stories about the human experiences and the trivia really help.
What advice do you have for kids who really want to get into space?
Don’t try to be an astronaut — it is so unlikely. The last European group of astronauts was picked in 2009; they’re not choosing astronauts all the time. If you dedicate your life to being an astronaut you’re taking your eyes off the prize. The prize is to find something, what you love in life. I didn’t set out to be a TV presenter; I study things, there are things I am interested in, and as a result I get to talk about them on TV. The TV thing is a by-product of being interested in the world. It’s the same for being an astronaut. Go to university, go do subjects you love, learn to fly a plane, learn to scuba dive, explore the world about you. Don’t think of astronaut as the end goal. Take Tim Peake for example, he didn’t set out trying to be an astronaut. He went into the military and he has a love of flying and become a test pilot, and he enjoys the outdoors and camping — he just followed what he loved.
If given the chance to go to space tomorrow would you go?
How long do I have to go for?
It’s a one-way mission to Mars, they haven’t planned a return yet.
No.
Okay, it’s a two-way mission to Mars, but they don’t know how long it will take.
No.
Alright, it’s only 18 months.
No. Keep going.
In what circumstances would you go? I know there is a yes somewhere.
There is a yes. What makes a good astronaut… it’s not just about being brilliant academically, it’s about being a rounded individual. It’s what happens when something goes wrong, because when you’re in space nobody is going to come and rescue you, you have to deal with it. How you handle those situations is what makes an astronaut. 99 per cent of the time it will be fine, but you’ve got to prepare for that one per cent when it’s not fine. And I’ll be honest, I would cry, and I would scream, I’d probably have a hissy fit, and I am a hot head — it would be a catastrophe. So, for those reasons, I’m out. What I would like to do is a trip to the Moon, two days there, two days back. I’d like to go to the Apollo landing site. Hearing stories from the Apollo astronauts about the Moon, I think it’s close enough that I’m not going to freak out, and you get the whole space experience: the weightlessness, getting to see Earth, getting to stand on another world.