Adult Swim: Celeb-Nerdy with Seth Green

We hope you're sitting down, because as it turns out, Seth Green is both famous and a nerd. Have you caught your breath yet? Okay, good. The guy who played everyone's favorite guitar-playing werewolf from Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Dr. Evil's son is, in real life, absolutely bonkers about NASA. It might be too little too late to save the recently-retired space-shuttle program, but nevertheless, we called up Green to talk about why he loves watching the skies.

You're a NASA nut, is that right?

I do love NASA. [Laughs.] I think it started when I was a little kid and realized that there were human beings who were strapping themselves to rockets and flying into outer space. [Laughs.]

Was it something your parents tried to encourage you to get into, or was it something you just discovered on your own?

It was just something I discovered naturally. There was more emphasis on the space program when I was younger than there is today. The space program, especially NASA, was responsible for most of the technological advances of our country in the last 50 years.

Did you ever entertain notions of growing up and becoming an astronaut?

Yeah, I was thoroughly interested in it. Especially after seeing a movie like SpaceCamp, but I was never as proficient in math and science as you need to be. You know, all the astronauts and people involved in the space program are expert mathematicians, really skilled scientists, and usually test pilots as well. It was a whole different career path I didn't pursue.

SpaceCamp Trailer (1986)

Did you have the math chops for it?

It just wasn't my skill set.

Well, it looks like you keep up with your interest in it nevertheless. I saw there was a video on YouTube of you visiting NASA Goddard back in May?

Yeah, especially in the last year I've gotten some amazing opportunities. We went to go see the scrub launch of Shuttle Endeavour and missed the actual takeoff, but because we were there when the launch was scrubbed we got to do things that you don't normally get to do, like go out to the rotating service station launch pad and see the shuttle itself strapped up to all the rockets, ready for launch.

Seth Green Visits NASA

Do they have gift shops, too, with really unusual stuff you can't find online?

No, but I saw pieces of comets and asteroids that are older than our galaxy. [Laughs.] That's kinda awesome. You just see the ingenuity of human beings. You see what we as a species have been able to accomplish, even in this short amount of time as we've been on this planet. That's super-interesting to me. I love the potential of mankind. And I love when people actualize that in any way.

“I love the potential of mankind. And I love when people actualize that in any way.”

So why do you think people aren't as interested in NASA anymore?

It's twofold. One, there's absolutely no political pressure surrounding the space program. In the '50s and '60s there was so much paranoia and fear and lack of understanding of our surrounding states, let alone our surrounding countries, and at the time we put men on the moon we were in a race with the Soviets. We knew nothing about them and believed they were going to put a nuclear base on the moon and aim it back at us.

One of my friends, when we were watching a documentary about that time, said that he wanted me to take into consideration that other beings from other worlds who are far more technologically advanced and superior to us have found their way into our galaxy to explore our species and see if we're worth communicating with. They see our moon and realized that we are technically advanced enough to send men to the moon, but we have built weapons of mass destruction and aimed them back at our own planet. That's how dumb we are.

But the truth is, the reason the program isn't as popular anymore is there's just no press about it. The press doesn't even cover the war anymore. The press only really covers things like Kim Kardashian and what Jennifer Aniston is up to. We as a culture have become more celebrity-obsessed than we have with improving our species. We're really becoming more and more confined to not just our planet, but to our homes, and our computers. Look at how much you do from your chair versus how much you do from outside. We're communicating faster than ever but about more focused topics. That's why I think the space program's not as popular; it's just not as sexy.

The government now has its smallest budgetary allowance towards the space program, which comparably is responsible for some of the biggest improvements of our time.

And I seem to recall reading something a while back about how they're no longer going to space? Is that right?

It's as simple as this: They're retiring the shuttle program. So, imagine Ford not making the Model-T. It's a lack of this vehicle. Take into consideration that for as long as the space shuttle has been working, they've had 135 missions, there have only been four major accidents. It's a pretty good record, but it's still a test vehicle. The space shuttle is still a test vehicle.

The same way that the military -- this is the easiest comparison I can make. NASA is a government-funded program, so they only have so much money every year to do every single thing that they want to do. So they really have to allocate that money carefully. The military, which is constantly developing new fighter jets and spy planes and things like that, uses subcontractors like Boeing or any of the other companies that has been building planes for all this time. That's how they make their test vehicles. But NASA is responsible for generating everything itself out of its own budget. So they've never really been able to make significant technological improvements. The military is constantly retiring planes and building new planes that improve upon the lessons they've learned through all the test piloting.

NASA just isn't capable of doing the same things. They don't have the money. So they have to put their money towards things they think are most important, like building telescopes to let us see what the hell is out there. It's a very cart-before-the-horse situation. We can keep building space shuttles to get us out in space, but we don't have anything out there. You know what I'm saying? Until they built Las Vegas, there was no reason for anyone to go drive through the desert. People don't even know the international space station is orbiting our planet all the time. The international space station, which is as large as multiple football fields, and can track the space shuttle as well as the Soviet rockets, and has international inhabitants, scientists from all over the world conducting experiments and working in perfect harmony, even with countries that have political opposition to one another. Again, not very sexy. [Laughs.]

Has being a fan of NASA enhanced your love of Star Wars and sci-fi, or do you feel they're at odds with one another?

I think it's all the same. The reason that I love Star Wars is because it's a swashbuckling adventure action story set in space, and the reason that I love NASA is because that's the reality. That's the precursor to every fantasy story that you've ever read. Things like Battlestar, Star Wars, even Buck Rogers, they don't exist without actual human engineering that pushes us forward into the future.

“The reason that I love Star Wars is because it's a swashbuckling adventure action story set in space, and the reason that I love NASA is because that's the reality.”

Well, it might even be more direct than we think, too. Supposedly most of the technology in Star Trek was based off stuff the military was actually working on and leaked to the showrunners.

Probably. I haven't heard specifically that, but I do know every time a space-based show gets made it's usually with the assistance of a program like NASA that are experts in the field. If they want their science to be accurate they'll consult actual scientists. If you look at something like Star Trek, where they have touch screens, tricorders, and all these devices -- and take into consideration just how far we've come? Kids that were born in the last five years will never be aware of a world where you can't videoconference on your cell phone. They don’t have that interrupt where anyone over the age of 25 is now discussing the convergence of media and how all these platforms are all molding into each other. But anyone born in the last five years? That's just how they watch television. That's just how they watch content. That's just how they communicate. They've always had a video screen in their pocket that could contact anyone else in the world, and give them crystal clear communication with minimal delay interaction instantly to someone on the other side of the planet. Whereas that's a great improvement to you and me, people born in the same 10 years aren't aware it's something different. We're closer to Star Trek than we've ever been. It's just allowing the technology to catch up our imagination.

“We're closer to Star Trek than we've ever been.”

Captain Picard’s Alphabet

I assumed by now we'd have jetpacks and rocket cars, but they don't take into consideration the reality of insurance in a world where everyone has jetpacks or flying cars. Do you know how many accidents there are just from people driving on the road? Just from people driving on the road? I want you to imagine now that people are colliding into each other in the air, and that those colliding vehicles are falling from the sky. It's never going to happen, guys. We're never going to have flying cars unless they're automated and eliminate the driver's personal involvement.

Putting aside potential catastrophes like that, are there any gadgets from sci-fi shows or movies that you absolutely wish were real and existed right now?

The teleporter. I think that's gonna be a massive improvement. We are, funny enough, closer to that than we've ever been. If you look at things like 3D scanners and 3D printers, that's the first stage of teleportation. You do a digital model of something that is broken down into the smallest of details, and then that 3D map of whatever it is, a person or an item, and it's brought into the computer on a digital level but not a subatomic level, and it's transferred out via a printer, whether it's a wax or resin printer, and it gives you an exact replica. It's still early, it's still brand new, but if you think about when they first started making steam engines, it went through a lot of development before we got it right. And now we're developing engines even further where we're trying to change the fuels that we use and the underlying systems of them. We're so mad that it's not happening faster.

What would be the first thing you'd use your new teleporter for?

Travel. So I could never, ever go to the airport, ever again. I'm honestly on two planes a week. I fly all the time. I have as many frequent flyer miles as Richard Branson.