Living in Space, with Scott Kelly

Discover what life is like aboard the International Space Station as Neil deGrasse Tyson sits down with former astronaut Scott Kelly, comic co-host Sasheer Zamata, former astronaut Terry Virts, Jennifer Fogarty, chief scientist of the NASA Human Research Program, and Bill Nye the Science Guy. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/living-in-space-with-scott-kelly/ Photo Credit: NASA

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.

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to the Hall of the Universe. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and tonight we're going to explore the science of human spaceflight, featuring my interview with astronaut Scott Kelly, who endured a year in space aboard the International Space Station. So let's do this!

• 0:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So joining me tonight is my co-host comedian Sasheer Zamata. Sasheer, welcome!

• 0:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And also joining us is NASA astronaut Terry Verz. Terry, dude, welcome to New York.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  Thank you, good to be here.

• 1:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your former commander at the International Space Station for four months in 2015.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  I was.

• 1:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you're the author of a new book, "View from Above."

• 1:09Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's beautiful.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  Nat Geo did a great job with it. Nat Geo. Yeah, Nat Geo, there you go, they did a great job.

• 1:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we'll be tapping your expertise tonight as we discuss my recent interview with another space station commander who was up there slightly longer than you. Is that all right?

• 1:27Speaker 01

  I got him started off.

• 1:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh!

• 1:29Speaker 01

  When I was commander, he showed up.

• 1:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You gave him his first job.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  I did.

• 1:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Astronaut Scott Kelly. So Scott wrote a bestselling memoir about that year-long mission, and it's called "Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery." And so I asked him about the title of this book, and just to see where it came from and what he was trying to do with it, let's check it out.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  You know, it's not only about space, but part of it is about this kid that was a chronic underperformer in school, growing up. If I was in school today, I think I'd be the, one of the kids with ADD or ADHD.

• 2:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They have a phrase for you, is what you're saying.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, then I was just a kid that didn't like pay attention, or was a troublemaker, or whatever. So, my experience with academics was almost nonexistent until I read the book The Right Stuff in my first year of college.

• 2:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you were all grown up before you even had a thought of going into space?

• 2:28Speaker 02

  You know, I thought about it, I think like every kid thinks about it. You know, I want to be a race car driver, an astronaut.

• 2:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Baseball player.

• 2:36Speaker 02

  Baseball player, I was a Mets fan. It was in the same category of those things. So it was never something that I seriously considered, aspired to, mostly because I didn't think it was possible for me, because I could not pay attention in class, I couldn't do my homework, I wasn't a good student. Now later, once I had this spark of inspiration that this book provided, I, took me a while, but eventually I was able to figure out how to pay attention, to study, to do better. I changed colleges to a military school, flew airplanes for the Navy for a number of years, became a test pilot, like the guys in The Right Stuff.

• 3:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, at some point, you said to yourself, "I have the right stuff." This is extraordinary, coming through an educational background where no teacher is saying he'll go far.

• 3:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they're basing it on, on metrics.

• 3:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That in fact, were the wrong metrics for who and what you were, and what you would ultimately become.

• 3:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think, you know, I'm a good example of, you know, how good you are at something is not necessarily an indicator of how good you can become. You know, just because you're not good at something in the beginning, doesn't mean you can't be the best at it someday.

• 3:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Terry, did you read the book The Right Stuff? Were you thusly inspired?

• 3:57Speaker 01

  I did, actually. I read The Right Stuff as a teenager. And the night before my first-

• 4:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What is The Right Stuff, first of all?

• 4:04Speaker 01

  So it's more about the qualities that make up the original astronauts. If you read the book, Tom Wolfe was talking about the Mercury astronauts-

• 4:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so he's not talking about you?

• 4:12Speaker 01

  Well, the night before my first launch into space, me and Zambo, George Zamko, my commander, we actually watched the movie The Right Stuff.

• 4:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're getting in the zone.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Went to sleep and woke up and went and launched on the space shuttle.

• 4:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So has the, our concept of The Right Stuff evolved?

• 4:27Speaker 01

  Well, certainly the culture has evolved since the 50s and 60s. But I think the same innate qualities of being willing to take risks, being confident, being willing to ride the rocket, as Tom Wolfe would say, is something that you still need as an astronaut, even today.

• 4:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Scott confessed, or admitted, that he struggled in school.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But then he went on to complete four space missions.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Commanding two of them. He was the first American to spend nearly a year in space. It was 340 days, not 365. But long enough.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was about a year. And he and his identical twin, Mark Kelly, are the first siblings to ever go in space. And we'll talk more about that a little later. But I'm just wondering, in school, where they always want you to get the high grade-

• 5:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this is clearly not the measure of success in this case. So do you, do you think we're valuing the wrong things?

• 5:23Speaker 03

  The wrong stuff.

• 5:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The wrong stuff?

• 5:24Speaker 01

  The wrong stuff, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's funny. So when this book came out, my 4th grade teacher actually found me on Facebook and came to one of my book signings, Mr. Swisher.

• 5:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which is when, when, when your book came out?

• 5:34Speaker 01

  When The View from Above came out, yeah. And I was at a book signing, he showed up. But I remember my mom had to go in and fight for me. When I moved to this new school, they thought there was something wrong with me or I wasn't smart, they wanted to hold me back. And she had to go in and fight for me and basically say, "Look, he's bored. Like, you guys are not challenging him enough." And they ended up, you know, pushing me and I guess it worked out in the end, right?

• 5:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I guess.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. But thanks-

• 5:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've got patches on that jacket? There's so many patches, they're overlapping each other.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, they are, they are.

• 6:06Speaker 02

  But every kid has a gift or talent. It doesn't necessarily have to fit in the mold, but everybody has these gifts and talents. And they need to be challenged and given opportunities in those areas and then they'll succeed.

• 6:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, before I flew in space, Scott Kelly was a Navy test pilot. Which seems to me is like one of the most dangerous jobs on earth. So I had to ask him why he'd sign up for something with such a high risk of death. Let's check it out.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  Interestingly enough, and weirdly enough, it was, that made it more attractive to me. That people were getting killed and, you know, burning in the woods, charred remains of...

• 6:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't mean to laugh, but it is a curious fact of human ambition. That the greater the challenge, not for all, of course, but for some, the greater the challenge, the greater the risk, the greater is their urge.

• 7:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that was you.

• 7:05Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And the greater the sense of satisfaction when you, you know, complete this thing, that is risky and challenging. You know, I never flew in combat in the military, in the F-14, but Winston Churchill has this famous quote, and it's something to the effect that there's nothing more exciting to be shot at and missed. And I kind of feel, I can relate to that a little bit with my career in the Navy and spaceflight, that the fact that it's so risky and you could lose your life makes it more exciting. Maybe a weird thing, but it's true.

• 7:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Terry, I see you've got your wings on this jacket among your 19,000 patches. So you were a test pilot also?

• 7:58Speaker 02

  I was, in the Air Force.

• 7:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so what's, why are you guys so eager to do stuff that might get yourself killed?

• 8:06Speaker 01

  It's funny NASA-

• 8:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, your mama, I'd slap you.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  My poor mom, I know, but, you know NASA has Office of Safety and the Safety Officer and stuff. And nothing about strapping a multi-million pound rocket applies to the word "safe." I mean, it should be like the Office of Less Dangerous, right? But it's just not-

• 8:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Office of Less Dangerous.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  It's not necessarily a safe thing to do, but-

• 8:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But is this personality trait common among all astronauts?

• 8:34Speaker 01

  Well, so my last task at NASA before I retired last year was to help go through the 18,000 applicants we had for the new astronaut class.

• 8:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And how many slots?

• 8:43Speaker 01

  12 got picked, yeah, so it was a pretty tight selection group. But what we were not looking for are thrill seekers. Like, we don't want, you know, daredevils being astronauts. You want people, you know, you have to be able to deal with risk and not freak out with risk. And in Hollywood, the astronauts are always yelling and screaming and blah, blah, blah. That's not what you want, right? You want to be able to deal with it. But you also have to be willing to take it, so there's a fine balance that you have to have.

• 9:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, in your life, either as a test pilot or with NASA, have you ever been in a situation where you've thought, at least briefly, that "this is it"?

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Well, I need both, I need like, a lot of fingers to count the number of times-

• 9:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 9:22Speaker 01

  Yes, of course. I was a fighter pilot and a test pilot, yeah.

• 9:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, has any of this ever happened to you?

• 9:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, um, the traffic on the way here.

• 9:33Speaker 03

  Insane.

• 9:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, if Scott didn't die from some of these other ways that put his life at risk, I wondered whether he might just have died of boredom for spending nearly a year in space. So, I asked him, "How did he deal with being cooped up for so long?" Let's check it out. What'd you do for fun? A book, you got a Netflix account, you know, what's the-

• 9:57Speaker 01

  Binge watch.

• 9:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Catch up on movies, yeah, that's- You're gonna binge, being in space is a good time to do it.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, you have some spare time, so I binge watched Game of Thrones a couple of times and then-

• 10:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Does NASA shield you from disaster space movies like Gravity?

• 10:11Speaker 01

  We watched Gravity in space. It was kinda cool, actually. But it was also sort of like watching a movie of your house burning down, but while you're inside of it. You know, when it was getting exploded apart.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  They did a good job.

• 10:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Terry, in modern times, I'm guessing to have the right stuff is to be in space and be able to watch a space disaster. Is that, would you?

• 10:40Speaker 01

  We watched Gravity, we watched 2001, which is pretty cool to watch, 2001. Watched Interstellar, I watched Alien. And then it was kinda weird, like, floating around in the middle of the night, you know, after watching Alien, kinda looking around the corner to see, you know.

• 10:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what is the middle of the night when you're orbiting Earth once every 90 minutes?

• 11:01Speaker 01

  So, actually, that's a great question. So we set our watches to GMT, so London time, England time, and you close the windows.

• 11:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  G for London.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  G stands for London, right, the NASA acronym, that stands for London. Greenwich Mean Time. Right. And, so, you have to have that, otherwise, if you, no kidding, had windows on the Earth and the sun's coming up and down every, you know, every 90 minutes, your body would not do well after a few days.

• 11:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'd explode.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you haven't agreed upon a timeframe.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, so, did you actually, did you, you said you watched Gravity?

• 11:37Speaker 01

  We watched Gravity. I've gotten to be friends with a gentleman by the name of Chivo Lebesky. He won the Academy Award for Gravity, Birdman, and Revenant, back to back to back.

• 11:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Which is pretty impressive. And, he, and he was like, so what, you know, how did it look? So visually, Gravity is very accurate, that's what it looks like. But thankfully, we don't, you don't have to take a fire extinguisher to the Chinese space station, or, you know.

• 12:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  There's not explosions and fires as much as there was in the movies, so.

• 12:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, of course, Scott wouldn't have known this, but, in Zero G, if you have long hair, it floats. You know, he wouldn't know that. I'm just saying, he was bald, alright, whatever.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Scott, yeah, so.

• 12:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, and I tweeted about the movie Gravity, because Sandra Bullock's bangs always knew which way. Gravity was pointing, they did not float.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 12:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I just said, "Mysteries of Gravity." Why her bangs do. Did you ever see the movie? Would you watch it in space if you?

• 12:36Speaker 03

  I don't know, I mean, maybe if I knew the science behind it, I would feel more comfortable watching that movie.

• 12:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because he was comfortable watching Gravity, but he was a little spooked by Alien. That's kind of interesting to me. For me, it'd be like the opposite. So Terry, what was your longest mission in space?

• 12:51Speaker 01

  My longest was 200 days.

• 12:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And?

• 12:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've always wondered, is that just a nice round number and they said, "Let's pull you down after 200?" Or was there an actual reason for this, other than that it's evenly divisible by 100?

• 13:03Speaker 01

  So it's supposed to be 169 days. And then, right as we launched, we had an American cargo ship blow up. In the middle of our mission, we had a Russian cargo ship blow up. And at the end of our mission, we had another American cargo ship blow up. So when the Russian one blew up, it was on the same rocket that the humans launch on, a Soyuz rocket. Thankfully, it was just a cargo ship. But while they were waiting for the accident investigation to happen, they decided to extend us. So we actually didn't know when we were coming back. We weren't sure if we'd come back on time or get extended for a few months.

• 13:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That when you go on rations? So did you get bored over 200?

• 13:36Speaker 01

  So they used to say that space shuttle flights, two-week flights, were like a sprint. And the space station flight, a six-month flight, was like a marathon. I found my six-month flight to be like a sprint that lasted for six months. I was never bored at all.

• 13:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what did you do for fun? As part of what it was to not be bored?

• 13:55Speaker 01

  I took pictures. I filmed a movie. Actually, we filmed an IMAX movie called Beautiful Planet.

• 14:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A beautiful film, I might add.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Tony Myers, the producer. If you've ever seen an IMAX space movie, Toni probably made it. And she did a great job with it. But I filmed that in my spare time.

• 14:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you had no downtime? So Sachir, if you were in space, what would you do for fun?

• 14:17Speaker 03

  Well, I think the things I like to do for fun wouldn't work in space.

• 14:23Speaker 03

  Like bowling, Jenga.

• 14:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But space bowling, but somebody ought to figure that one out.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  Space bowling will work out.

• 14:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's a work outable thing.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  It is.

• 14:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a mass hitting some balls. Well, Scott Kelly wasn't just up there to just be an astronaut on the space station. He was a kind of, sort of, a living science experiment in his year-long mission. And for part of that, but he also had command of the ISS. And so, I'm just curious, what are the duties of the commander of the ISS?

• 14:52Speaker 01

  So, the commander, it's an interesting job because sometimes if there's an emergency or something really serious has happened, you take charge, you do this, you go here, close this hatch, or whatever. Ninety-nine percent of the time, there's the crew, but there's also Houston mission control, there's Moscow mission control, we had an international crew with Russians and Europeans. So, there's lots and lots of fingers in this pie, and the commander is just one of the fingers in the pie. So, you have to go from collaboration, working together, and then, you know, when the stuff hits the fan, it's time to be in charge and take charge. So, you really need to be kind of on all ends of the leadership spectrum when you're the station commander.

• 15:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Does stuff actually hit the fan?

• 15:33Speaker 03

  It can't.

• 15:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gravity.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  It floats into the fan.

• 15:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It floats into the fan. So, is this, is this...

• 15:41Speaker 01

  Chapter five.

• 15:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do they give you like a captain's chair? Do you feel like Captain Kirk?

• 15:47Speaker 01

  So, when you have like this daily teleconference and you get to like float in front of the microphone and be the guy in charge of the microphone, which is pretty cool. But, yeah, though literally, I wrote a chapter about some of the emergencies that we had in space.

• 16:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  That were pretty...

• 16:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Klingons and other stuff that only a captain can...

• 16:03Speaker 01

  Well, we went through one in particular. There was an ammonia leak, and ammonia is the coolant, like your radiator fluid in your car. And they tell you if you smell it, you don't need to worry about it because you're going to die. I mean, it's a dangerous thing. So, it's a long story, it's a chapter-long story, but it, basically, we spent a day thinking that the space station was dead. We thought it was going to be left in space to be de-orbited, and we were going to come back to Earth, and no one would ever come back. That's how serious it was. It ended up being a false alarm, but it was a pretty amazing story.

• 16:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool. Well, coming up next, Scott Kelly explains why and how he drank his own pee for a year when StarTalk returns.

• 16:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk from the American Museum of Natural History. We're talking about life aboard the International Space Station, featuring my interview with a guy who was there for nearly a year, Scott Kelly. I had to ask Scott the question that we all want to know the answer to. How do bathrooms work in space? Check it out. The 0G toilets, they work okay for you?

• 17:24Speaker 02

  Very complicated toilet and it works pretty well.

• 17:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why should it be complicated?

• 17:29Speaker 02

  You know, you gotta, you know, separate the air from the urine before it's sent to a tank.

• 17:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so the whole toilet system?

• 17:39Speaker 02

  Oh, the system and then some of the urine. And you know, usually when I talk about the toilet, I'm also talking about the water process.

• 17:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Recovery.

• 17:46Speaker 02

  Recovery system that turns our urine into drinking water. So it's pretty sophisticated.

• 17:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even though intellectually, I know that's an entirely doable thing.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just emotionally, that just sounds nasty.

• 17:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, like I drank my pee for a whole year.

• 18:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 18:01Speaker 02

  Actually, I actually drank everyone's pee.

• 18:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  All mixed together.

• 18:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What happens to all that is not the H2O?

• 18:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From the urine, what happens to that?

• 18:14Speaker 02

  It's put into a container and then we eventually, when that tank fills, we put them into smaller tanks, send them down to the Russian segment. They put them in the Progress, their resupply ship. And eventually that burns up in the atmosphere. And then that tank will eventually come back with urine in it. We put it into our system, we turn it into water, eventually brine.

• 18:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so what burns up in the atmosphere?

• 18:37Speaker 02

  The whole Progress.

• 18:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 18:39Speaker 02

  The whole spaceship.

• 18:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so that spaceship is designed, it's your garbage disposal system?

• 18:43Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 18:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Didn't know that.

• 18:45Speaker 02

  And that is a critical resource. The ability to get garbage off of a spaceship is something that is not, not simple.

• 18:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Terry, you can't just eject garbage out and you can't just roll down the window and throw garbage out.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  You can't.

• 19:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause it might hit something else.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  Well.

• 19:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you really have to send this stuff away.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  Right. So if you just ejected it, first of all, you'd waste air. But every time you open up the airlock, some air goes outside, so you don't want to do that. And second of all, if you're throwing your-

• 19:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just said roll down the window.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  You could do that once. You could do anything once. But if you're ejecting your trash out into space, then you're suddenly in orbit next to a giant can of poop, right? So you don't, you want, you want to put it in a spaceship and let it fly away and not just kind of have it hover there right next to you in orbit with you.

• 19:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what you're telling me is that your pee and poop, or the stuff of the pee that was not returned, plus the poop, vaporized on re-entry and has descended as molecules.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  It's in, it's in rain on our, yes, it's, it's, it is in the atmosphere.

• 19:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the last time I'm opening my mouth, looking up in the rain. Now they know, like astronaut poop is scattered into it. So I didn't know that there's a whole ship that is on a one-way mission to collect garbage and burn up on its way down.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  Oh, there's multiple. And taking trash away is a big deal. Like, just like at my house, I have a rule at the house, like for every pound of stuff that comes in, somebody's got to clean out a pound of stuff and take it to Goodwill or, you know, throw it in the trash.

• 20:17Speaker 03

  Ugh, what a terrible rule. I would hate that if you were my dad.

• 20:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dad?

• 20:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Throw it away.

• 20:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the reclaimed water is not only recycled pee, but sweat, wash water, and you would just find drink, you trusted this?

• 20:36Speaker 01

  Well, it's, you know, this would cost about $10,000 to launch into space, so it makes a lot of economic sense to recycle stuff, especially water.

• 20:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how long did it take you to sort of get over that ick factor?

• 20:48Speaker 01

  There's just some things you just don't think about, like you're drinking your water. How about those Astros, you know? What's the latest tweet that the president sent out? You just don't, you don't worry about, you just don't think about it.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  You give yourself distracting thoughts.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  Yes, but in all seriousness, um, drinking water is a big problem on Earth.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  I know.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  There are billions of people with a B who don't have clean drinking water.

• 21:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  So this NASA technology has been sent around the world to help recycle water. And, you know, that's the kind of hard problem you have to solve in space. And then you can take that technology and apply it to the problems we have here on Earth. And hopefully, space can benefit us.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  Well, I asked Scott Kelly another fan favorite question. How's the food up there? All right, let's check it out. What I missed more than the food of Earth is the... Ah, I love that too. The food of Earth. How many people get to say that? About 500 and something. Okay. I miss the food of Earth, yes. I missed more the experience of just sitting down with, with, at a table where you don't have to worry about all your stuff floating away and losing your spoon and... Also, I think a lot of people think, you know, you're in space, you're floating. That must be like the most comfortable thing. And it sort of is a comfortable existence, but it never changes.

• 22:08Speaker 02

  Like, when you go home at night, you sit on the couch, you're more relaxed. When you lie on the bed, you're even more relaxed. It helps you go to sleep. And it's a contrast between... Exactly. In the bed, in the comfy couch, or walking around. Or walking around opposing gravity. But in space, it's always the same. Whether you're trying to go to sleep, or whether you're doing an experiment, or whether you're eating, you're just kind of floating like this and you kind of almost feel like you're hanging in the straps or something. So, so you're never in a position to say, um, gee, let me go get comfortable so I can now go to sleep? Doesn't exist, yeah.

• 22:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Terry, what sort of Earth thing did you miss most on your 200-day mission?

• 22:48Speaker 01

  So one day I was floating down node one, the middle of the station, and I heard this bird chirping, this pshh, and I stopped and I went back and Misha Kornienko was exercising. And I said, "Misha, what's going on?" We were talking in Russian. And I said, "There's a bird in there." And he laughed, and he said, "No, no, no." So the Russian psychologist had sent him sounds from Earth. And it was so awesome to hear birds. So everybody wanted these MP3s. We had rain, we had waves, we had...

• 23:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  See, if I went up there, I'd want street traffic noises.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  We did. We had a cafe. We had like, you know, glasses clinking.

• 23:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  And I went to bed for about a month. I would put my headsets on, get my sleeping bag, and listen to rain. It was great.

• 23:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Another question is, I've been told that you lose your sense of, not your sense of taste, but so much you...

• 23:42Speaker 03

  Like taste in clothing?

• 23:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  (laughing)

• 23:45Speaker 03

  Like yellow suits.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  Astronauts don't have that, yeah. We don't have taste in clothing.

• 23:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Any taste at all. Your taste buds need to be more and more stimulated the longer you're up there. What's going on with that?

• 23:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm a pilot. I don't have to ask the scientists, but a lot of guys do...

• 24:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you affirm it. You can affirm this.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  You know, shrimp cocktail is everybody's favorite thing. It's really spicy. A lot of people put like mustard and pepper. They give us, you know, some sauces. And people just like spicy stuff. It does change, it changes, and it gets less sensitive, so you need more spice.

• 24:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 24:21Speaker 03

  And does that stick when you get back to Earth? Like, are people putting on like weight?

• 24:25Speaker 01

  No, it changes and then it goes back.

• 24:27Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 24:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Terry, what does the ISS smell like? You said it's sort of antiseptic, but it's gotta have some kind of funk.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  It depends on your crewmates.

• 24:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  (laughing)

• 24:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, it actually...

• 24:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, how often?

• 24:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do your bath. Plus, since it is an international space station, we all happen to know that not every country's habits is the same as others when it comes time to how often you bathe.

• 24:55Speaker 02

  I was actually worried about that. And so there's no showers in space. But you take a towel, squirt some hot water in there, maybe put some soap in there. And you can get really clean doing that. The worst part, they give you one exercise shirt for every two weeks.

• 25:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, coming up, we'll take your questions about the challenges of living in space when StarTalk returns.

• 25:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. We're exploring the science of human spaceflight. Featuring my interview with former astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent nearly a year in space. And I asked how that mission might have influenced his health. Let's check it out.

• 25:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is 340 days in zero G.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Bone density. How'd you fare?

• 25:52Speaker 02

  I lost a little bit, not much, and not much more than I did on my six-month flight, which was interesting.

• 25:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was that because you stayed on the exercise treadmills and things?

• 26:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it shows that that exercise protocol works if you follow it.

• 26:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How about other things like teeth, eyes?

• 26:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I had some effects on my vision. You know, the microgravity does some, causes some structural changes in our eyes.

• 26:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't mean to laugh, but it shows some structural changes to your eye. So something in the vitreous humor or the focus thing?

• 26:33Speaker 02

  Swelling of the optic nerve, coroidal folds is what they call like the coroid of our eye is like where the retina sits and it's the thing that like nourishes our retina.

• 26:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's only with very long-term long duration?

• 26:46Speaker 02

  And only in men, surprisingly, so far.

• 26:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Anything else in terms of...

• 26:50Speaker 02

  I'm not worried that I'm gonna go blind or even have any blind spots. But that is the larger worry if we go to Mars someday. You know, you don't want astronauts getting there that can't see well. And it's an incredible facility we have currently to do some science that will help us on our, with our exploration goals that we are not always gonna have. I mean, eventually, we're gonna put this space station in the Pacific Ocean, and we need to do this kind of science now while we have the capability.

• 27:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool. Well, we need some extra expertise in this segment. So, joining us now to assess the biological challenges of extended human spaceflight, we have Jennifer Fogarty. Jennifer, welcome.

• 27:33Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 27:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a NASA biomedical scientist.

• 27:38Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 27:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, thanks for joining us here on StarTalk. And your title with NASA is you're the chief scientist of the NASA Human Research Program. Did I get that right?

• 27:48Speaker 04

  That's correct.

• 27:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, anything good or bad that happens to astronauts' health is your fault?

• 27:55Speaker 04

  Yes, completely, 100%.

• 27:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what specifically are you tasked to do?

• 27:59Speaker 04

  So, the breadth and depth of our program looks at the human at the center of this exploration activity. So, it's gonna interact with the entire vehicle, which is now at this point is an exoplanet. It's much more complex than any vehicle we know of today. It has to provide everything they need to survive.

• 28:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're referring to the space station?

• 28:19Speaker 04

  And the future vehicles as well, which have a slightly different mission. So, we're trying to understand how does a human interact with the computer system? How do the humans interact with each other? How do they get their nutrition for much longer periods of time than what we do?

• 28:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if you're on the ground, you can't do the experiments on weightlessness. So, you have to, you have to get the data from them. So, could you remind us of like the bad stuff that happens to you other than the throw up when you're weightless?

• 28:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's definitely some transitions that are harder than others. So, vomit happens, for sure. You know...

• 28:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, a doctor just said vomit happens.

• 28:54Speaker 04

  For sure.

• 28:56Speaker 04

  Most of my day is spent talking about pee, poop, and vomit.

• 28:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, alright.

• 29:00Speaker 04

  It's not as glamorous as it sounds. So the bone loss, the muscle loss, the changes to your vascular physiology. We've noted some architectural changes to your eye. And we're really trying to understand any deeper things that might be occurring.

• 29:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I also hear about cosmic ray stuff hitting your... Did this happen to you? Did you see it?

• 29:21Speaker 01

  On my fifth night in space, there was... I was going to bed, and all of a sudden, this bright white flash happened. And I thought, "Cool." I had read about Apollo astronauts experiencing this. When a cosmic ray hits your optic nerve...

• 29:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very high-energy particle from space, deep space.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. A galactic cosmic radiation. And I saw this white flash, and I thought, "Cool." Ew, except, you know, then you think about what's actually happening. And there's this place over the Earth called the South Atlantic Anomaly, where the magnetic field kind of dips down, and the radiation environment is worse over the South Atlantic. And if you ever...

• 29:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it dips down low enough so that...

• 29:59Speaker 01

  In the shuttle, in the orbit.

• 30:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the orbit, it's stronger as you go through there, yeah.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  And if you close your eyes and you're over the South Atlantic Anomaly, for me, anyway. And every astronaut sees it differently, and some experience more than others. But if I closed my eyes over the South Atlantic Anomaly, I would see flashes.

• 30:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Jen, is this a... Does he go blind eventually? What happens here? You can just whisper it.

• 30:24Speaker 04

  No, we don't believe so. But we're trying to understand it better, because I think the point of having an optic nerve hit by a high-energy particle and causing damage to a cell can't mean good things. But your body has intrinsically very complicated repair mechanisms, and we just want to know how those repair mechanisms continue to function, and if they were ever to fail, can we do something about it?

• 30:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are there any changes in the brain?

• 30:48Speaker 04

  So the brain has some interesting changes. It moves a little bit.

• 30:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interesting changes. Yeah, okay. Like these euphemisms, architectural changes to your eyeball. So I've been told. Interesting changes to the brain. Okay, go.

• 31:02Speaker 04

  Well, what's interesting about them is they're happening, but yet you can't detect any consequence of it. So the brain seems to move a little bit. The fluid-filled areas in your brain seem to change dimensions a little bit.

• 31:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Change dimensions?

• 31:15Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get bigger? Does he have a bigger brain or smaller brain when he comes back? It can't be smaller.

• 31:22Speaker 04

  It's larger but less dense.

• 31:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you're not as dense as you used to be. All right.

• 31:31Speaker 04

  There's an upside to everything. So, yeah, I mean, part of it is it's an extraordinary thing to put the human body through, and then you watch the human body adapt. And you say, at what point does adapting no longer become positive? It's a struggle for the body to try to tease out all these stressors and say, what am I going to prioritize today? Managing fluid stress, or GCR damage, or nutritional supplements?

• 31:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what about the radiation field, other than the dip in the South Atlantic anomaly? Is there a general greater exposure to radiation, I presume, if you're up in orbit, especially high orbit, relative to Earth?

• 32:09Speaker 04

  That's correct. I mean, all astronauts are considered radiation workers, so we look at them and manage their exposures, which is why not all astronauts were eligible to go on the one-year mission.

• 32:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So one of the twists of the Scott Kelly case is that he has a twin brother, Mark, and he left his, who's also an astronaut, but in this particular case, they left him on the ground. And so now you have a twin study, basically. So what did this fact do for you as a researcher? What were you after?

• 32:38Speaker 04

  So it was really an amazing opportunity to have identical twins and keeping one on the Earth while one flew. I think we did recognize, you know, both had a lot of space experience prior to this mission. But you couldn't resist the fact to look at a genetic level, given your genes are controlling so much, but then you have the environmental pressures that may or may not trigger, you know, something to change.

• 32:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what did you learn?

• 33:00Speaker 04

  Well, at this point, we are now a little over three years after the mission. It was really considered three years of science. We studied them for the year before they went, the year while he was up, and the year since he came back, which was March 2017. The other part of this is that we will not be able to protect their identity. When we do this science, right, it's going to be blatantly obvious who the subjects were. And this is a real concern for NASA is to protect the identity of the astronauts as test subjects. When you do genetic work, the deeper level is you also have to protect their family members. So at this point, the global...

• 33:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a privacy issue.

• 33:35Speaker 04

  It is a real privacy issue.

• 33:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But what have you... Oh, so you can't share what you've learned?

• 33:39Speaker 04

  Well, at this point, they're just rolling out with an approved release, and they're going to be publishing papers this year. But there's been some increase in things like telomeres, which are the end of your chromosomes and are considered protective and generally get shorter while you're aging.

• 33:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's an increase in those.

• 33:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it shields you against aging.

• 33:57Speaker 04

  Well, there was an interesting finding that happened in Scott was his telomeres got slightly longer, which was a little opposite of what you would have expected.

• 34:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that brings us to the part of the show we call Cosmic Queries. Tonight, we'll look at questions about the challenges of living in space. Shashir, you've got questions from our fanbase.

• 34:17Speaker 04

  I do. Chris Ryu from England says, "All right, I'll be the one to ask it. Has NASA done any experimentation with how humans will fornicate in 0G?"

• 34:28Speaker 01

  That's a great one for...

• 34:29Speaker 03

  No.

• 34:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She's lying!

• 34:33Speaker 04

  All right, no.

• 34:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so the official answer is no. Well, now, that's the NASA answer. How about other countries in the space station? We don't have sovereign laws over them. They're pieces of the space station is like their own country, right? So what about the French?

• 34:51Speaker 01

  It was a long 200 days, Neil. That's all I can say.

• 34:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The French?

• 34:57Speaker 01

  Well, I didn't fly with the French, yeah. I did not fly with them.

• 35:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Next question, go.

• 35:02Speaker 04

  Elm Soup from Oklahoma asks, "How would one perform surgery in 0G? For example, if an astronaut had to have an emergency appendectomy."

• 35:11Speaker 01

  So, we would treat, I was one of the crew medical officers, and we would probably treat that with antibiotics, try to kind of string them along, and if it got so bad, we would put them in the Soyuz and send them back to Earth. Because you can't do open surgery, first of all.

• 35:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait.

• 35:24Speaker 01

  I'm a fighter pilot, so you don't want me doing surgery on you.

• 35:27Speaker 04

  That seems like, that's your excuse for a lot of stuff.

• 35:29Speaker 03

  I'm a pilot, so, I don't know.

• 35:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, but Jen, why can't you talk them through some, an appendectomy? I've seen that in the movies.

• 35:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, we do remote guidance with ultrasound. Our first rule of thumb is to really do prevention, as much prevention. He's right on the money with you would treat it medically rather than surgically. Because actually, surgery has been done on a zero-g aircraft, and you can do it. The problem is, the post-surgical care gets really complicated really fast, and that's when it gets super dangerous.

• 35:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do we have more, more? Yeah. Last question, go.

• 36:02Speaker 03

  Last question. @JudsonDoyle4 on Twitter asks, "What steps are being taken to soothe the senses? Sounds, smells, tastes, blue skies, breezes, you know, Earth stuff."

• 36:14Speaker 01

  Well, I talked about the sound.

• 36:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This would be mental health, Jen, right?

• 36:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, sure.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  So, I talked about the sound. Having sounds from Earth was great. We get cargo ships every few months, full of supplies, and they try to send up fresh vegetables, and which are good to eat, but my favorite part about them was actually smelling them, especially oranges. I mean, the smell was great, to actually have, like, smells from Earth, so, that helped.

• 36:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What we'll do in the next segment is assess the psychological, the full depth of psychological challenges of living in space, when StarTalk returns.

• 37:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. We're talking about the science of human spaceflight. Featuring my interview with astronaut Scott Kelly, the first American to spend nearly a year in space. And I asked Scott about the psychological challenges of being aboard the space station for that long. Let's check it out. What's it like psychologically?

• 37:23Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Emotionally?

• 37:24Speaker 02

  It's a big place, and I never felt like I needed more space, but...

• 37:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was a joke.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:34Speaker 02

  You can steal that one from me.

• 37:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, gotcha.

• 37:37Speaker 02

  I think from a psychological perspective, the challenge is not the fact that, you know, it's you're confined, it's more that you can't leave. And if something happens to your family, in my case, on my previous flight, my sister-in-law, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, was shot. And I still had several months in front of me, and I couldn't come home to support my brother or be with my family. And it's those kind of moments, those kind of things, that I think create more of a psychological stress on people. The fact that if something happens to their kids, your kid gets sick, injured, loved ones, something happens, you are not coming home.

• 38:18Speaker 02

  And I think over time, that kind of, you know, can, you know, wear on certain people. To me, that was always the, the most stressful part. It wasn't the fact that my own personal safety was at risk, it was more that, you know, something happens on the ground and you cannot get there and be with the people that you care about.

• 38:39Speaker 03

  I can't believe, you asked this man to open up about his psychological issues, and your first response was a pun.

• 38:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I just, because of space.

• 38:50Speaker 03

  You actually, you have a lot of, um, bad puns. And I, I put, I put a list together.

• 38:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you've been, you've been listening?

• 38:58Speaker 03

  I've been listening to you. There's, what do you call a year on a diet? A light year. Look at your face.

• 39:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 39:09Speaker 03

  Want to know how I make such awesome space puns? I plan it.

• 39:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Jen, what is, what is NASA research say about the psychological effects of space travel?

• 39:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, we definitely know it's challenging. We know definitely having private space is important. You can't go for a walk, you can't get away from a situation really, so you're gonna have to go someplace that's private.

• 39:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the private space is tantamount to therapy.

• 39:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For otherwise being in a crowded confined space.

• 39:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, it definitely gives you the option to go reevaluate yourself, be with things that you enjoy, a book, a movie, whatever it happens to be. We also look a lot at augmented reality and virtual reality to give people a sense of the sounds and sights that they would miss from Earth.

• 39:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Jen, for the longest of missions that might be in NASA's future, is there any thought given to what we see in science fiction movies where you go into some kind of slumber, some kind of hypersleep? Is that in the works?

• 40:11Speaker 04

  There has been some research kind of dabbled into, it doesn't seem very realistic in the next couple of decades, but it's still something you're gonna want to understand.

• 40:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's basically hibernation.

• 40:21Speaker 04

  It is.

• 40:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Something similar.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  Neil, I think your attitude is the most important thing. My attitude, and we got extended and we didn't know when we were coming back to Earth, was this is my chance to be in space. I'm gonna have the rest of my life on Earth.

• 40:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To not be in space.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  To not be in space. So, you know, it can be a grind, whatever, but it's pretty cool, too. You get the float, you get the view is not describable, honestly.

• 40:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you don't need to get the book, because he cannot describe the view. The view I cannot describe from space.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  That's the sequel. That's gonna be the, that's the sequel.

• 40:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, my good friend, Bill Nye, has sent in a dispatch to share his thoughts on the many challenges of life in space. Check it out.

• 41:03Speaker 05

  When you're on orbit circling the Earth, you're in near zero gravity. You're in free fall. It's like, you're free. Except, you're not really free the way you might be on a sunny summer day, because whether you're down there or up here, you have to breathe.

• 41:26Speaker 05

  So if you want to leave the cozy confines of your spaceship, your space station, you have to be inside one of these, a space suit. Astronaut Scott Kelly has said that long-duration spaceflight is like being in prison because you're always locked up, airtight. You can't get out. In fact, it's hard to even scratch your nose. Bill Nye out. Uh, back to you Neil.

• 41:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's falling into a wormhole there. The vortex. Now watch out. So, up next, Scott Kelly will share a viewpoint from space that applies to us all. Startalk.

• 42:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to Startalk from the American Museum of Natural History. We're featuring my interview with former commander of the International Space Station, astronaut Scott Kelly. Check it out.

• 42:30Speaker 02

  Will you be sad the day we drop the space station into the Pacific? Um, I will definitely be nostalgic about it. I will think about it and I will watch it. I will absolutely be there if there's any way I possibly can. Uh, and I will appreciate, you know, what we've accomplished, which I think is the hardest thing we have ever done as humans. Building and operating the space station. Uh, when I was leaving for the last time and I was looking out at it and I'm thinking, you know, we built this thing while flying around the earth at 25 times the speed of sound in a vacuum, extremes of temperatures of plus or minus 270 degrees. From day to night?

• 43:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, constantly, changing temperatures, built by this international partnership of 15 countries, different languages, enemies, you know, working together in space to do the hardest thing we have ever done. And if we can do this, we can do anything. I mean, if we want to go to Mars, we can go to Mars. If we decide we want to cure cancer and put the resources behind it, we can do that. Absolutely inspired. Evidence of what is possible. Absolutely.

• 43:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Terry, you've commanded the space station just as he did. So what would you be feeling the day the ISS plunks into the Pacific Ocean?

• 43:51Speaker 01

  The Pacific, yeah.

• 43:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The great toilet bowl of space.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  If we have a follow-on program, I'll be sad but excited. What happened with the shuttle, we ended the shuttle program and canceled the follow-on program, and so that was really not good. And when I talk to folks in Washington, I always tell them, the most difficult thing is not the rocket science, it's the political science. And we've got to figure out how to get that straight so that every time, four years from now, when the next guy come in, he doesn't cancel the last program.

• 44:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe the word "science" doesn't belong in the phrase "political science."

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Well, you know, that's really the hurdle for a vibrant human exploration program is the political challenges as much as it is the physics challenges. I think the space station has been the most important American foreign policy initiative since the Marshall Plan. During my mission and training...

• 44:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So minus the Marshall Plan, rebuilt Europe after the Second World War.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  After World War II. And so when I was in space...

• 44:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Huge cooperative, shared...

• 44:48Speaker 01

  Former enemies worked, you know, to rebuild the world. And so, things were not good between America and Russia on Earth, and yet I was in space with Russian cosmonaut friends, training with them, and that, to my mind, was how people can work to do difficult things. Like, we weren't worried about politics, we were just worried about staying alive. You know, like, it was not easy to stay alive in the vacuum of space. I think that's the best thing.

• 45:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In this final clip, I asked Scott what he gained from spending so much time in space, looking down on Earth from the space station. Let's check it out.

• 45:24Speaker 02

  My Russian colleague that I was on the space station with for a year... Said to me one day, he goes, you know, if we want to solve our two countries' problems, we should just send our presidents here together for a whole year.

• 45:40Speaker 02

  Being in space, looking down at the earth where you don't really see any political borders, where at times can look very, very peaceful and inviting, and then you realize it's not. There was one day where I, we were having these beautiful flights over the Mediterranean. It was cloudless and there was, I mean, it was incredibly blue. And then on the news, you would see that like same area, you would see the kids like washing up on the shores, the, the, you know, kids from Africa and immigrants trying to get to safety, you know, dying in that very, very beautiful Mediterranean Sea. It was, it didn't make sense to me. Like, why can't somebody do something about that? So this is a cognitive disconnect. Yeah. Between the beauty of it at a distance. Mm-hmm.

• 46:25Speaker 02

  And the news that permeates. Yeah, from earth, which is generally bad news. But, you know, and seeing this and seeing the earth and it looks like, you know, we're all part, we're all in this together.

• 46:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When I reflect on Scott's thoughts, thoughts that are shared by so many of his astronaut brethren, no matter the nationality, this is a perspective that you glean when you're above it all. You see nature on its largest scale with oceans and land and clouds. That perspective from space is transformative. Astronauts experience it firsthand. I wonder, can it be transmitted to others who need it most?

• 47:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everybody who takes arms against everybody else, politicians, people who run this world, who see and think of the world as a color-coded map. I've got a quote.

• 47:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From an Apollo astronaut, Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14. You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter million miles out and say, "Look at that, you son of a bitch." Ladies and gentlemen, you've been watching StarTalk. I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astro physicist. And as always, I bid you to keep looking up.