The International Space Station: A Space Age Cathedral

While cathedrals give people a place to contemplate Heaven from our place here on Earth, astronauts on the ISS can view Earth from "the heavens" above. This show highlights the many ways the ISS is like a modern-day cathedral.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. Welcome to StarTalk. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. I'm also the director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. With me today is my co-host is Chuck Nice. And one of the cosmic themes that we'll be touching today is the concept, the construction, the maintenance and the running of the International Space Station and other grand architectural visions that human beings have had throughout time.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  Sweet.

• 0:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And later in the show, we're going to invite a friend, an architect, grand architect, Jim Polshak will be joining us a little later. But before then, you know, we have a very special guest that we'll be tapping into and it's astronaut Shannon Walker.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  You know, you shouldn't say tapping into a female astronaut.

• 1:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excuse me? Okay, fine.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  I'm just saying.

• 1:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We will be communicating with.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, communications.

• 1:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fine, okay. You're the one with the...

• 1:15Speaker 01

  Yes, you're right. I am the one with the dirty mind. My mind is beyond dirty, Neil.

• 1:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  My mind is filthy.

• 1:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Filthy. Thanks for that warning upfront. We have a pre-taped recording of the conversation I had with her while on board the space station.

• 1:30Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 1:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it even has like time delays in there for the signal to get through all the transponders and things.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 1:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we'll hear that in a bit.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  I did not know you could call space. I was unaware. Now, what carrier? What carrier do you use to call space? Because I know it's not mine. I'm roaming when I leave my living room and go to my dining room.

• 1:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's called NASA.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 1:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so you gotta know the right people to get the NASA on your smartphone.

• 2:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So a couple of things, you know, the, the history of a space station concept, it, it goes way back, actually. Well, way back at least a century, but the one that's sort of most influential is a, a, a version of it that came out in nineteen twenty-nine. Herman Obrath, who published the concept of a wheel-like space station that rotates.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  That seems vaguely familiar to me.

• 2:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, yeah, that's right, because it's shown up in a couple of movies.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  Did he also come up with the concept of a computer that actually takes over the space station and won't allow you to make decisions for yourself?

• 2:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You mean a homicidal computer?

• 2:31Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, he left that out of his story plan. So when you have a rotating space station, what goes on is you get to simulate gravity on the outer rim. It's that centrifugal force that would keep sort of a, a pail of water.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Full, even if you swing it around vertically, if you swing it fast enough, none of the water will fall out, even though it's hanging upside down.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  That was also my problem as a child, being a weakling.

• 2:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You couldn't.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  I couldn't swing it fast enough and I just ended up wet.

• 2:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you've, so this upset you your, the rest of your life. That explains a lot.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, I'm, I'm still not over it, as you can clearly see.

• 3:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it turns out Herman Obrath, one of his students was Werner von Braun. He was a space pioneer extraordinaire, and he was German, as the name surely implies, and in the nineteen.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  As most space pioneers are.

• 3:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the nineteen thir- in fact, that's right.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the nineteen thirties, uh, Werner von Braun, as one of his students, was inspired by this space station concept, and would later, after the Second World War, be snatched by Americans, rather than get sent to trial or to put to death, because he worked for the Nazis at the time, as, as many of the, the scientists did of the day. But he had a special background in aerospace, a word that barely even existed at the time.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 3:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we brought him here and we said, hey, it birthed our aerospace, our aerospace lives. And so Werner von Braun began to sketch what the future of space might be like, inspired by these early illustrations. And so, and there's a famous magazine series, in Collier's Magazine, I don't know if you know about this.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  No, I've never heard of Collier's Magazine.

• 4:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Is it, is it anything like Better Homes and Gardens?

• 4:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This one, there's a whole series on space, and this could be Better Homes and Gardens. in space, it could have been re-titled. And it was, it birthed the vision statement for Amer- America's future in space with the rotating space stations and colonies and food and families.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Right, people living in space.

• 4:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People living and hanging out, it was, it was, it was Earth, uh, what, everything you'd do on Earth, you would now be doing in space. And so, uh, after that, with, the Russians were the first to get an actual space station as they were the first to do so many things.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  True, true.

• 4:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, uh, Salute One was their first space station. You know, the, the original crew got killed coming back, that was bad.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  No way.

• 4:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that was bad. We don't hear much about all their dead astronauts.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  That's not something you kind of, uh, promote.

• 4:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, exactly.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  When you're trying to further your space station.

• 4:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Hey, how'd you like to live in space? I mean, these suckers died on the way back.

• 4:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On the way back, yeah, so that you lose your volunteers real quickly. But I think the first space station most people might remember was Mir. Mir was, in fact, is Russian for peace, if I remember my Russian, my three Russian words, that's one of them. And Mir orbited, uh, for 15 years. And the Russians, in fact, set all the, the, the duration records for staying in space at the time. None of these space station rotated, so they would spend the whole time weightless.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  Just weightless the entire time.

• 5:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The entire time, I can't even imagine what that, what that would be like.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  Okay, now you have just, since you said that, uh, introduced to my feeble mind so many problems that I can, I can't even be.

• 5:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I haven't, uh, wait, wait, there's more problems that you could still think about.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Okay, good.

• 5:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give me another minute.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Go for it, go for it.

• 5:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so they, our first version of a space station was Skylab.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Now, I remember that.

• 5:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, we all remember Skylab, that was the first one right after the Apollo program. And the, they used one of the segments of the Saturn V rocket, which wouldn't be taking you to the moon, that would be filled with fuel to get you to the moon. If you're just staying in orbit, they put the whole space station within one of those segments and they hung out there. And what I remember most is when Skylab re-entered.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The atmosphere.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think it was Baskin Robbins had a contest that if you got hit with a Skylab part, you get free ice cream for the rest of your life.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  Which would only last two and a half seconds because you got hit by a space station.

• 6:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  Quick, have some ice cream before you die.

• 6:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You would not be alive for it. So.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  Oh, that was the best ice cream of my life, which is now over.

• 6:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you know, I recently, we, I spoke with Shannon, Shannon Walker, she's an astronaut onboard the space station, the International Space Station, and I wanted to, to check out what, uh, the, the questions I asked her, it was a fun interview, and let's hear what she has to tell us.

• 6:38Speaker 02

  Dr. Tyson, this is Houston. Please call the station for a voice check.

• 6:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Station, this is Neil deGrasse Tyson. How do you hear me?

• 6:47Speaker 03

  I hear you loud and clear aboard the International Space Station. It's a pleasure to speak to you today.

• 6:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How are things up there in orbit? Do you ever get accustomed to being weightless? Or is there a sort of a queasiness every morning after your breakfast?

• 7:02Speaker 03

  When you first get into space, it feels a bit odd. It is a very unusual situation to be in. But depending on the person, your inner ear settles down fairly quickly. Mine settled down right away and I had very little trouble adjusting to zero G.

• 7:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're really good at amusement parks?

• 7:19Speaker 03

  That's true. I am a big fan of roller coasters, so I have no problems with those.

• 7:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I were in the space station, all I'd be doing is sort of inventing physics experiments that will do different things in zero G than they would on Earth's surface. Is there some bit of physics you can share with us where in orbit it's just really cool to do and to watch that no one on Earth would have any sense of because we're just sort of stuck here in a one G environment?

• 7:47Speaker 03

  Oh, you know, there's so many things you can do when there's no gravity around. Of course, a lot of the fun things to do are things like playing with your food and making little bubbles and have them go here and there. There's a lot of different things. You know, it's tough to say right off the top of my head what some of the really cool things to do, other than playing with your food.

• 8:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's what I would do all day. I would flick peas around and watch them ricochet off the sides of the module. In fact, I wonder how much food is embedded in the electronics up there anyway, because the temptation to do that has got to be huge.

• 8:20Speaker 03

  It is huge, but of course, we have to clean everything up, so we have to temper our excitement with the realities of keeping the station clean.

• 8:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you think they have food fights up there in zero G?

• 8:32Speaker 01

  I, I hope to God not. Uh, cause judging from that interview, there would be some pretty ugly food fights.

• 8:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you, if, if you just joined us, that was Shannon Walker, uh, onboard the International Space Station. She's back on earth right now, but that interview was, uh, taken a couple of months ago.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Couple of months ago.

• 8:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, when she was still, when she was still onboard. And you know, it's interesting, uh, when you're, it, when you're weightless, it's zero G, everything floats.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so what's funny is normally when you're eating or just hanging out.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You, you take a glass, let's say, and you put it down. But in space, you just let go of it.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then it just stays there. And they have to be careful. That's why there's a lot of Velcro up there.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  Oh, that's pretty cool.

• 9:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everything's got Velcro.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Everything's got Velcro on it.

• 9:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you know, so the space station is huge. It's like the size of a football field right now. When you consider all of the area taken up by solar panels and the modules that were constructed. And it's an international collaboration. And there's a lot of training they have to do to go up there beforehand.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you know, there's, people tend to think that there's a, uh, you can just walk into a zero gravity room. In fact, I asked Shannon about that later. But no, there's no zero gravity room at NASA. You have to sort of simulate that. And so they have what's called a vomit comet. You ever hear about that?

• 9:43Speaker 01

  The vomit comet?

• 9:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. You never heard about that?

• 9:45Speaker 01

  Uh, isn't that a ride at, uh, Great Adventure? I think I've lost my cookies on that once.

• 9:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's an airplane has a special trajectory through the air that has a, a segment of it. It puts you in free fall, very similar to what would happen if you cut the cable of an elevator that you happen to be standing in, except you don't crash at the bottom.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, yeah, like that. Cause everybody wants to do that.

• 10:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's a traject- special trajectory. It's actually a parabolic trajectory where you are temporarily weightless. You get 20 seconds, 30 seconds of a weightless period. And so that's a nice place to sort of test your metal.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  See if you've got the right stuff or just the adequate stuff.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Right. Or, or to see if you can keep your lunch down. Hence the name, the vomit comet.

• 10:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so the space station is, uh, it's in orbit around the earth and is in what we call low earth orbit, a couple of hundred miles up, and it goes sideways at seventeen, eighteen thousand miles an hour.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 10:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the reason why people say, oh, they're weightless because they've left earth. No, they're still part of the earth. They're still orbiting the earth.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're weightless because they're in free fall towards earth, just the way an elevator is.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  All the time.

• 10:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All the time.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  So just constant free fall.

• 10:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and you say, well, why don't they hit earth? Because they're going sideways seventeen thousand miles an hour.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  So they're falling along with the earth.

• 11:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Along with the curvature of the earth.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  So they're just falling along the curvature of the earth.

• 11:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Let me, that is the way I want to fall.

• 11:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, if I could fall like that.

• 11:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause that way you never hit anything.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and so the, the whole space station was constructed over many years, hundred billion dollars this thing cost, many, many budgets out of multiple years from NASA, and there's shared budgets with Italy, well, the European Union as well as Russia, and.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  Now, is it a real shared budget, or is it kind of like our Iraq war share budget?

• 11:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's got, it's got a little, some elements of that. Okay, we put up the first billion, you, you bring up the food.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, look, this is a global effort.

• 11:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. It's a little bit of that, but, but it's, we, we recognize that we're, you know, we've got the big, we're the big space rollers here, all right? So, of course, Canada has a mo- a mobile arm that's up there, and, you know.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  That is so like Canada. That is so like, ah, Ca- the mobile arm of America, Canada.

• 12:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they have an arm that actually deploys satellites and things. It's a very useful, controllable thing, and, and I think, uh, you have to be sort of young enough to have operated video games in order to be good at the mobile, at the, it's called the Canada arm.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is what it's called, and.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Or something else that I did when I was young, to be good at operating the arm.

• 12:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What, I, should I ask?

• 12:32Speaker 01

  No.

• 12:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, fine, we'll leave that one go. That's Chuck Nice you're listening to there. Professional comedian.

• 12:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, it took more than a thousand hours of extravehicular activity to assemble the space station. This is like a Lego dream. If you just like assembling things.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if you built stuff as a kid and became an astronaut, EVA is extravehicular activity. That's NASA speak for spacewalk.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 13:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, they need more syllables, I guess it makes it sound.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Extravehicular activity.

• 13:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta take a quick break, but when we come back, we're going to talk to architect extraordinaire Jim Pulchek. We'll see you in a bit.

• 13:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. So in this segment, I want to introduce an old friend, architect James Pulchek. I'm gonna call him Jim for this interview. He's an architect extraordinaire and former dean of the Columbia Architecture School. Why do I know this guy? Because he was the architect for the Rose Center for Earth and Space here in New York City, which was the completely rebuilt Hayden Planetarium. Jim Pulchek, welcome to StarTalk Radio.

• 14:04Speaker 04

  Pleasure, Neil.

• 14:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, listen, I got you on here because we're talking about the International Space Station, and it's a big, expensive, constructed project that an entire culture comes together and does and executes. And I want to know from you, is this like an architect's dream to get a nation to say, "Hey, build this," like the pyramids or the cathedrals? Or where are you in this?

• 14:34Speaker 04

  The dream is to build something that can get away from this earth, which is going to hell. Bad.

• 14:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  It's an escape mission.

• 14:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you want to build the escape pods, is that what you're saying, Jim?

• 14:50Speaker 04

  You know, small is still beautiful.

• 14:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Jim, what is this urge for cultures to just want to build big? Right now, the space station's a hundred billion dollars. And, but first, let me get, what's the biggest thing you've built?

• 15:01Speaker 04

  The biggest?

• 15:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 15:02Speaker 04

  The biggest.

• 15:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Biggest in concept and scope and grandeur.

• 15:06Speaker 04

  The biggest?

• 15:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is it not the internet, is it not the Rose Center?

• 15:10Speaker 04

  No.

• 15:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, oh, man.

• 15:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, to come down to earth, it's, it's the, it's the place where they clean the water in New York City, Newtown Creek.

• 15:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You made a water treatment plant, and that's your biggest project?

• 15:22Speaker 04

  Well, it took an awful lot of engineers.

• 15:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 15:25Speaker 04

  And we were the little teeny dog wagging the great big tail.

• 15:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, in space, somebody's gonna have to be clean and stuff as well.

• 15:30Speaker 04

  This is true.

• 15:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So keep that on your resume, in case we come back to you.

• 15:33Speaker 04

  I'm not getting rid of it.

• 15:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Jim, the International Space Station with, with solar panels and all is about the size of a football field. And with, with, with this structures and what it took to put that together, I'm just curious. Do you, do you embrace these kinds of challenges as an architect? Or do you see them as, oh damn, now I gotta figure that out?

• 15:55Speaker 04

  I am the storyteller.

• 15:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know what that means.

• 15:59Speaker 04

  That means, that means you need, you need a lot of air.

• 16:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think we paid you too much to be our, our architect, if that's all you were in the, in the back room.

• 16:07Speaker 04

  You weren't, you were not paying me, brother.

• 16:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, so I'm just curious, you know, you look at the cathedrals of, of, um, you know, of Europe. These are big, grand things that took a lot of money, took a long time. The space station is, is almost two decades and, and, you know, 15 years under construction.

• 16:30Speaker 04

  It's gotta be at least a pyramid.

• 16:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At least.

• 16:32Speaker 04

  It's gotta be at least a pyramid, two decades, big, yeah.

• 16:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so, so Jim, what is the, do you, do you analogize the one to the other?

• 16:42Speaker 04

  Not really. You know, actually, I was gonna go back to a bad metaphor about this kind of urge to, to be big, big, big, big.

• 16:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 16:50Speaker 04

  Cancer's a bad metaphor, but I mean, things just keep growing.

• 16:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

• 16:55Speaker 04

  And, uh, I don't know, the older I get, the more I do, small looks good.

• 17:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Small, so you want to build small, not big?

• 17:03Speaker 04

  Small.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Wow, and for a moment there, I wanted to date you.

• 17:08Speaker 04

  You know the expression.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  Those are the words I've been waiting to hear my whole life, Jim.

• 17:12Speaker 04

  Kiss me.

• 17:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's rejoin my interview with Shannon Walker, taken a couple of months ago. Recorded a couple of months ago while she was on orbit in the International Space Station. Because we chat about some modifications to the interior and exterior decoration. Let's see what she tells us there. Do you look out the window at all?

• 17:39Speaker 03

  I do look out the window a lot. Whenever we have a chance to, the ground keeps us pretty busy and so don't get to spend many hours a day looking out the window. One thing about going around the Earth, you don't always cover every part of the Earth. So when something interesting is happening, say the volcano that's been erupting in Indonesia, we've actually been traversing that part of the world during the nighttime. So we cannot see it easily from space. But we've seen lots of hurricanes from up here and the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico was very easy for us to see from up here.

• 18:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's interesting. So the things that you notice, it's not obvious, I think, to the average person, that you don't see the entire Earth in every view. You're a couple of hundred miles up, so your horizon of view from one edge to the other, it might be a thousand miles, I suppose, or less. So you don't have a complete Earth-wide view. And for that reason, things could be happening that would take several orbits for you to catch up with, I guess. Is that right?

• 18:40Speaker 03

  It is since that's right. We do have a cupola that's on the station and it gives us a pretty good 360 view of the Earth. So I can see the Earth's horizon from one end to the other fairly well, but of course you're looking at a long distance at a pretty shallow angle, so you're not going to be able to see what's happening on the ground pretty far away. So you really need to be going over something to get a good view of what's going on underneath you.

• 19:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  See, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't make a good astronaut because I would just park an easy chair up in the Coppola and I'd daydream all day there.

• 19:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was Shannon Walker onboard the International Space Station. That's pretty fascinating stuff, man. It is, and like I said, I have the NASA plan on my cellphone. I was gonna say. I was able to call her up. Just the fact that you can call space just freaks me out. So Jim Polczek, my special guest today, architect, the International Space Station has modules, connected docking stations, it's got compartments, airlocks, nodes, living quarters, bathrooms, it's, when it's done, it'll, it'll, it'll weigh 8,000 pounds if it were here on Earth, so, these challenges are extraordinary, and I don't suppose they're, I mean, how different are they to what you've got to do to build? In fact, what, tell me about the materials you build with, are you limited by your materials?

• 19:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, everybody is limited by the materials, but you're mostly limited by your budget.

• 19:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 19:59Speaker 04

  There are only so many materials.

• 20:02Speaker 04

  And they're not infinite, and they're very old.

• 20:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 20:05Speaker 04

  Like, glass.

• 20:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and like, stone?

• 20:09Speaker 04

  And like, stone.

• 20:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No stone, we don't use stone on the space station.

• 20:12Speaker 04

  You know, when you were describing it, you know, I thought of submarines.

• 20:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 20:15Speaker 04

  The other side of the coin.

• 20:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The space and then there's... And deep, deep sea. Deep sea.

• 20:20Speaker 04

  Deep, deep, deep sea.

• 20:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, the pressure difference is way greater under the sea than it is just out in, in, in, in the vacuum of space.

• 20:28Speaker 04

  I would've guessed that.

• 20:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, so I'm just curious, what, what, what are some of your challenges when you build compared to what we know we had to do? Like, I, I'm just trying to think of this cathedral analogy, because this is a huge structure in space, multiple generations participating, multiple countries, all with the shared vision statement, that we want to, that we want a presence in space.

• 20:50Speaker 04

  I feel like a little ant pressed between cathedrals on the one hand, and the space station on the other. In other words, we're, we're kind of being manipulated between those two cultures, if you will.

• 21:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and so what's, so, and towards what end?

• 21:10Speaker 04

  Well, the end, I'm, I'm a hopeless idealist, I mean, my, I think the biggest thing an architect has to do is just be persistent, never give up the idea.

• 21:23Speaker 04

  Period.

• 21:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so there's a mission statement that you say, "I'm going there and I'm not giving up."

• 21:27Speaker 04

  No, never.

• 21:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "I'm gonna build the biggest cathedral in the world. I'm not giving up, no matter how many people it takes."

• 21:33Speaker 04

  The bean counters are telling you, uh, you can't do it.

• 21:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:36Speaker 04

  You just keep going ahead.

• 21:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, now, here's the thing, we just learned about the couplet that was added to the...

• 21:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's awesome, I think. Like I said, I park an EG chair, and that's what get no work out of me for the rest of the mission.

• 21:47Speaker 04

  I'm trying to imagine it.

• 21:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. And so, uh, tell me about glass as an architectural element. That glass in the couplet, by the way, is, uh, Chuck, I don't know if you knew this, it's of a material similar to what your Pyrex glass is in your kitchen. Like Gorilla Glass or Corningware? Yeah, yeah, Corningware, basically, yeah. It's, it's so, it doesn't crack under hi- under high temperature changes, and so... When it's hit by the sun, will it bake whoever's sitting under it? And...

• 22:14Speaker 04

  What's interesting about glass...

• 22:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 22:16Speaker 04

  Is not the glass, as I said, is ancient, it's the sticky stuff that holds it together, that keeps the weather from coming inside.

• 22:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, the...

• 22:26Speaker 04

  And if somebody invented a weapon that would melt sticky stuff, and they beamed it on this city of ours, this great city, it would all fall down.

• 22:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is this what you think about at night, how to destroy New York?

• 22:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Damn, bum us out, Jim.

• 22:42Speaker 04

  To each his own.

• 22:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man, well, well, plus, I wonder if, like, the military's listening to this, 'cause if someone else built a... Exactly. A rogue nation builds a space station, you don't need bombs, you just have to melt their clock. The sticky stuff. The sticky stuff. I just, I, I just see a Bond character just going, "America, this is Scorpio."

• 22:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've just melted all the clocking around your windows. Right. You know, I mean, windows in cathedrals, they, they, they paint on them, or they, they have stained glass, you know?

• 23:09Speaker 04

  Yes, they do.

• 23:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, they, they tell, also tell stories. And ours don't really do that, 'cause we wanna look out of these windows, of course, in space.

• 23:15Speaker 04

  About the windows in many cathedrals, because they, they have little pictures of people in suits. Those people in suits often were the people that gave the money that allowed the trades, the guilds.

• 23:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm, oh, okay, yeah, they look like them, yeah. It was, it was like a little vanity thing, yeah.

• 23:33Speaker 04

  And I...

• 23:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jim, we, we have no image of you in, in the Rose Center for Earth and Space. I don't hate to break you that news.

• 23:38Speaker 04

  You even have my name, but it's very small.

• 23:42Speaker 01

  Is there a Bank of America window at least? That's right.

• 23:45Speaker 04

  Yes, the one you get your eight, that's an ATM.

• 23:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll be back in a few minutes, but more from our interview with Shannon Walker when we return.

• 24:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson with my co-host Chuck Nice. Chuck.

• 24:21Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 24:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks for being on the show. We've got with us architect James Polshak.

• 24:25Speaker 04

  Non-comedian.

• 24:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Non-comedian. She's trying to help us understand and sort of tie a bow on, on this package that is the space station as a major work, not only of engineering, but of architecture. I'm intrigued when you reminded us all that the cathedrals of yesteryear, the patrons would have little sort of versions of themselves standing next to Jesus or whoever venerated figure was in the stained glass.

• 24:53Speaker 04

  Well, I was thinking about that tall building in Dubai.

• 24:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The tallest one in the world.

• 24:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think it's called the Hajj or the Bajj. Well, it isn't actually. It's now named after the guy from Abu Dhabi who gave them the money to complete it because they went broke.

• 25:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 25:08Speaker 04

  And that, by the way, is seven football fields high.

• 25:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. Seven high.

• 25:14Speaker 04

  And it's now called Khalil.

• 25:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Khalil.

• 25:17Speaker 04

  That's just the name of the building.

• 25:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Khalil.

• 25:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So, so what you're saying, so.

• 25:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was gonna say that's.

• 25:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Jimmy, you're saying if NASA runs out of money, we'll just name, name this, name stuff after the highest bidder. That's what you're suggesting.

• 25:28Speaker 04

  Name and name it after Donald Trump.

• 25:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got enough stuff in New York named Trump.

• 25:33Speaker 04

  I am so looking forward to the Taco Bell International Space Station.

• 25:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so Jim, so who built these cathedrals? Was it just people off the street? Who, who, who, who did it?

• 25:47Speaker 04

  The, the, you know, you're talking to Shannon Walker?

• 25:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Shannon Walker is our astronaut in space. We'll get back to my interview with her in a minute.

• 25:53Speaker 04

  Female monk. These were monks. They were disciplined. They didn't care about name recognition. They had rules, unwritten rules.

• 26:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, but-

• 26:02Speaker 04

  They were the, they were the astronauts of their day.

• 26:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But the monks weren't necessarily architects, right? Or designers, or-

• 26:08Speaker 04

  They were, they belonged, they were like a guild. They knew how to make things.

• 26:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 26:12Speaker 04

  And they had dreams. And they made things.

• 26:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 26:15Speaker 04

  Cool.

• 26:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So guild, so is there a sort of counterpart to that today?

• 26:20Speaker 04

  Something called unions.

• 26:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unions are the guilds?

• 26:23Speaker 04

  The disappearing guild.

• 26:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, interesting. So, so the unions in, on Earth and in space, it's the astronauts.

• 26:29Speaker 04

  You got it.

• 26:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Chuck, what?

• 26:30Speaker 01

  No, no, I was just, I didn't realize that that was the purpose of monks. You know, I just thought they were dudes that walked around with turkey legs. I didn't know that they actually built things.

• 26:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Turkey legs, no, that's King Henry VIII with a turkey leg.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  No, I'm thinking like Friar Tuck. Wasn't he a monk or was that a friar?

• 26:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, you got it.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  He was a monk, right?

• 26:46Speaker 04

  That's a friar.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was a friar, right?

• 26:48Speaker 04

  Chicken licking.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  Chicken.

• 26:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so, so, so Jim, so how, do you distinguish when rich people give money to build something as opposed to governments or agencies or, or the state?

• 27:04Speaker 04

  Well, sign of the times. I have to watch what I say, but you know.

• 27:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you don't, not on this show. Chuck has to watch what he says. You're-

• 27:12Speaker 04

  Real estate developers-

• 27:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're an architect for goodness sake.

• 27:14Speaker 04

  Um, have been around since the papacy began.

• 27:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 27:19Speaker 04

  I mean, in fact, they were the biggest real estate developers ever.

• 27:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 27:22Speaker 04

  The church.

• 27:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:23Speaker 04

  And that's where the cathedrals came from. And the name of the game was awe. Today, the name of the game is profit.

• 27:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh-huh. Oh, okay.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  Chuck, you know about that. Oh, yeah. So back then, they, what they were trying to do was impress. You know, try to, you know, s- strike people awe inspiring, wow! It was a wow factor.

• 27:44Speaker 04

  It worked.

• 27:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, we get impressed, I'm impressed just by having my conversation with Shannon Walker on orbit on the space station. Let's pick up my next segment with her. I understand you're speaking to us from the Kibo Japanese module up there and from what I understand the space station is this amalgam of national modules where astronauts from the various participating countries conduct experiments of interest to their nation or their scientists and I'm just curious in each module do they serve their sort of local food so if you wanted a Russian cuisine one night you just sort of float over to their module or you want some sushi you go to Japan what's the coordination of these various modules and how do they work together?

• 28:26Speaker 03

  To answer your question on the food we do have a variety of food up here from all nationalities so yes I can have Russian food one night and Japanese food the next night and food from Europe the night after that and of course American food. All the modules, all the laboratory modules work together and we are scheduled to work in just about all of them so I have conducted experiments for the Japanese in the Japanese module for the Europeans in the European module and of course for the Americans in the American module. The Russians are heavily conducting experiments down in their module.

• 28:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've been to Russia before. How is your Russian right now and I understand that you're coming back in the Soyuz capsule. I visited Russia some years ago and got to visited Star City and they had a mock-up of the Soyuz. I barely fit in it but I guess you're not in there for very long. You're just coming back to Earth's surface.

• 29:12Speaker 03

  Coming back, yeah, we're only in there for a few hours. Coming up it was about two days that we were in the Soyuz module. I'm actually the co-pilot on the Soyuz module so my Russian is very technical in nature and it's good enough to communicate with the control center and with my Russian commander on the Soyuz.

• 29:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if you see something really cool out the window you have no Russian for that. It's gotta come out in English I guess.

• 29:37Speaker 03

  It would probably pop out in English first and then I know a few Russian words to say how cool things are but it would be a short conversation.

• 29:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we've got an international collaboration in space. It's about time countries collaborate for something other than waging war, I say.

• 29:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you know. And so Jim, my special architect guest today on StarTalk. Because I can't shake this sort of cathedral analogy to what's going on here. In fact, when we were building the Rose Center for Earth and Space, we all collectively thought of it as sort of a cosmic cathedral, right? I mean, it's grand, it inspires awe. And when we think of designs, however, when it's an international collaboration, the stuff has to fit together. But if you're designing different places of worship, for example, it's got to honor whatever is going on in the various religions, right?

• 30:32Speaker 04

  Yes. Boring answer, but true.

• 30:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. That's why we have Chuck here.

• 30:39Speaker 04

  But no, the Rose Center was a once in practically any architect's lifetime a chance to kind of peel the onion. And there's you inside. I mean, it'd be great to project your face on the sphere.

• 30:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 30:55Speaker 04

  Which I'm sure you wouldn't mind.

• 30:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, I assure you, in spite of what went on on the Colbert Report the other night.

• 31:02Speaker 04

  I was gonna say, Colbert already said that.

• 31:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have no such ego or intentions, no. But yeah, there's a whole sphere waiting to tell a story. That's part of what's going on.

• 31:13Speaker 04

  It's also a mystery.

• 31:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 31:15Speaker 04

  I mean, when we were doing it, I was, as you know, because you've seen some of the images, I was inspired by science fiction images, novels published in 1930, 32, thereabouts. You straightened me out once, once we saw a great big sphere in a photograph of Manhattan Island, landed almost exactly where the center is. And I said, what is that? And you said it's the size of an asteroid that landed in Arizona 50,000?

• 31:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, years ago.

• 31:46Speaker 04

  Right?

• 31:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Yeah, but if it's city of Manhattan and it fell from space, Manhattan wouldn't still be there. That's just one of these things.

• 31:54Speaker 04

  It'd be like melting the caulking in the window.

• 31:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 31:58Speaker 04

  But the Bronx would.

• 31:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Bronx, yeah.

• 32:00Speaker 04

  Nothing could kill the Bronx.

• 32:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, obviously, the International Space Station is being used as a scientific laboratory. And it's been criticized by some scientists as, "Well, we're not really advancing a space frontier as much as we'd like." But I think people forget that sometimes there's other geopolitical motives for doing things as well. The fact that we have an international collaboration up there, that has geopolitical value.

• 32:23Speaker 01

  True.

• 32:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The fact that there are multiple nationalities of astronauts shaking hands and...

• 32:27Speaker 01

  People working together.

• 32:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Working together, that's always a good thing.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  Very Star Trek.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  They may even have, at some point, I'm looking forward to the space station having some guy who looks like a prawn, or some sea creature, up there giving orders.

• 32:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or somebody who's imminently logical.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So...

• 32:46Speaker 04

  Well, you're leading me to mention the psycho-pharmaceutical element of being in space.

• 32:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, well, that's interesting, why you want to go there, because NASA, as you may know, did experiments with spiders.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  I did not know.

• 33:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, because here's what happens, if you try to drug-induced the state of mind of some creature, let's say a dog or a rat, you can't then say, "Hey, how do you feel?"

• 33:12Speaker 01

  This is true.

• 33:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But...

• 33:13Speaker 01

  Well, you can, the problem is, if they answer you, you're just as high as the animal.

• 33:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, in fact, there was a period where NASA did some experiments with spiders. What, why is that, that's a fascinating question.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, why spiders?

• 33:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because spiders, when they're doing their thing, make a perfect web. So, in fact, spiders were given marijuana, and...

• 33:36Speaker 01

  And various experiments.

• 33:37Speaker 04

  Stoned spiders?

• 33:38Speaker 01

  And did they weave a web in the shape of a brownie or a doughnut?

• 33:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, let me back up. First of all, there was an experiment to see how spiders...

• 33:51Speaker 01

  Chuck.

• 33:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There was an experiment to see whether spiders in zero G would spin a web any differently. All right, now that, now you need a good baseline for how differently a spider can behave under different chemical or other forces of nature.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 34:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Be they chemical or otherwise.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you do the other experiments, and you do things that we know influence us. Marijuana, okay, so, one of them is marijuana. And so the spider tried, and got about halfway, lost concentration, and gave up.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  For real?

• 34:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 34:23Speaker 04

  Why were there two?

• 34:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying. Why were there two female spiders? Well, well, okay, so the female spider like lays the eggs, you know, they do more things for you, you know? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Tell me about it. Yeah.

• 34:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The spiders had names, by the way, Arabella and Anita. Those two spiders were on Skylab back, actually, yeah, back in the 1970s. And so, but I'm just, we're resurrecting these experiments, just wanted to let you know how they were. So the marijuana-induced spiders, they gave up halfway. And here I am as a sucker trying to get a medical marijuana card. Okay. All I had to do was spin a web. Gotta take a break, but more StarTalk when we return.

• 35:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson with my co-host Chuck Nice. I also have with me in studio architect Jim Polchek. Before the break, we were talking about spiders in space. Just to clarify, I want to get the data straight here. Okay. The spiders I'm referring to, it was a pair of spiders, Arabella and Anita, they were spiders that were taken up on Skylab back in the 1970s to see how they would spin a web in zero G. Okay. But you need further baselines of how spiders would spin. And so you subject them to other, other forces of chemistry. Right. That might alter what, the integrity of what it is they spin. So on Earth, they then subjected them to marijuana and they also put other spiders

• 36:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  on speed, a Benzadrine is some variant on speed. And with that one, they spun their webs with great gusto. I'm sure. I'm sure they ran out of silk. But the problem is, they spun it with such gusto, it was not without the planning necessary to go along with it. And there were huge gaping holes in the web when they were done. Well, that makes perfect sense.

• 36:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they did a fast job, but it was not a very good job. Right. Another set of spiders, they subjected to caffeine. These are things that we know exist in our culture. And of course caffeine is one of the most common drugs and soft drinks and tea and coffee. Mm-hmm. And of course, this latest, uh, what's the stuff people drink now? Uh, these energy drinks? Yeah. Right, right, there it is. Yeah, uh, um.

• 36:53Speaker 01

  Vitamin zero.

• 36:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so what do those spiders do? Well, the problem was, they were incapable of spinning anything better than just a few threads together, but at, at random. And so... From just caffeine? Just caffeine, that's right. So, I'm curious about that. So you're better off, you know, smoking a blunt than you are having a cup of coffee? If you're a spider. If you're a spider. If you're a spider. I'm not advocating anything here. And there's another one, they gave them an ingredient, a common in sleeping pills, and they just dropped out before they even started, that one.

• 37:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sleepy spiders. They spun a hammock. But, but experiments on people, I think, are even more important than all the rest of this. In space, as you may know, you lose bone density in space. And, uh, not only that, because gravity's not operating on your body, you actually get taller in space. Oh. Yeah, you can grow an inch or two in space, just by being there. Your body kinda stretches back out. That's pretty cool. It's pretty cool, so... It's like, it's like being on a cosmic rack.

• 37:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A painless, cosmic rack. Right, a painless cosmic rack. But there's, the problem is... Right. Being in zero G, the, the stress that your body's normally under, under one G, is what maintain, apparently, is what maintains bone density. And so, in space, if you're up there a long time, we learned in the early days of the Mir Space Station, and all of this has been confirmed by International Space Station, that you come back with lower bone density than you did when you went up. So basically, you come back as Sally Field.

• 38:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  (laughing)

• 38:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the weird thing is you come back taller, but then you crumble into a pile of dust.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  You're like a vampire.

• 38:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's part of the problem. So the International Space Station's been actually a little bit controversial over the years. On the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, I actually spent time in Washington DC. And got to interview a whole bunch of folks from that era, including a, I have a clip when I was down there chatting with John Glenn, America's first orbiting astronaut.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  And American hero.

• 39:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And American hero. And a fellow Ohioan. And half the astronaut corps is from Ohio, so you're not, are you from Ohio? What else? Okay, fine. Let's check out what John Glenn has to say about the International Space Station. I'm here with Senator John Glenn, America's first astronaut. What do you think should be NASA's greatest priority going forward?

• 39:23Speaker 05

  Well, I'd like to see us fulfill our commitments on things we've already committed to and have not fulfilled before we do a lot of other things. We built the International Space Station. We have spent just around $100 billion on that station. It just now is able to have a full crew onboard, and yet they cut the research money out of it. And I think that is one of the craziest things I've seen in all the time I was in government is to make a $100 billion investment and then not even try to get the research return on it. So I'd like to see that done. And if we want to go to the moon and Mars, that's fine. I think that's great, but let's pay for it and let's not take the money out of the research that was supposed to be done on the station.

• 40:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Perfect answer. Once again, it's all about money.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  Oh my God, that's, that's actually stunning.

• 40:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, okay, since then, that was summer 2009.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 40:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, because if you do the math, 50 years earlier would have been 1969.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 40:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, that was a big celebration at the Air and Space Museum in Washington. So since then, there's been a movement in Congress and elsewhere to designate the International Space Station as a national laboratory. And when you do that, then there's a stream of research monies that then support the zero G experiments that you would, that you'd conduct.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  Well, I hope so, because nothing would be worse than to have a $100 billion paper weight floating out in space. That's crazy.

• 40:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Paper weight?

• 40:43Speaker 01

  Well, I'm just saying, like, if you don't actually-

• 40:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A weightless paperweight.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  A weightless paperweight.

• 40:48Speaker 04

  You know, in architecture, that would be called historic preservation.

• 40:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interesting, interesting.

• 40:54Speaker 04

  That's right, even the government gives you a tax break and it's basically the same thing, so.

• 41:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So here in space, a 15-year-old thing would be historic.

• 41:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 41:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interesting. If we do that on Earth, why not do it in space? Well, wouldn't it just to preserve it, to actually exploit all that it can be for us? Because zero G, you can grow very pure crystals. There are a lot of things that happen on Earth. When subjected to one G, turn out one way. When subjected to zero G, become something else.

• 41:20Speaker 04

  Right.

• 41:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That universe of zero G research is not fully explored. I don't have a problem with that. Especially since the International Space Station in this international capacity is, it forms a kind of platform for international relations like none has ever happened before in the history of the world. It's one of the greatest collaborations there ever was.

• 41:40Speaker 04

  I can't even, all I keep hearing is $100 billion. That's all I keep hearing.

• 41:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Jim, if you had $100 billion, what would you build in zero G?

• 41:51Speaker 04

  The most comfortable bed.

• 41:55Speaker 04

  That the world has ever known.

• 41:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Except that, Jim, would you need it? Would you even need, you're floating, Jim. Beds are for one G people.

• 42:03Speaker 04

  I gotta imagine the bed. What we do is imagine.

• 42:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Imagine a zero G bed. That's what you'd be doing, Jim.

• 42:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's pretty cool, though. Just to remind you, that interview with John Glenn, John Glenn was not only our first astronaut to orbit the Earth, had three orbits back then. He also later became, he's a Colonel, and he became Senator Glenn.

• 42:23Speaker 04

  How old is he now?

• 42:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's like 130. I mean, the guy's, he went into space when he was almost 80. I mean, back into space.

• 42:31Speaker 04

  Right.

• 42:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, an American hero and an American treasure, actually. We've got to wrap the show, but I want to thank my guests, and as always, I bid you to keep looking up.