Lessons from Space: What an Astronaut Learned About Life on Earth

This transcript was made in part by an automated service. In some cases it may contain errors. 

Jon: [00:00:00] Welcome to break some dishes,

Verda: defying the rules to inspire design.

Jon: I’m John Strasser.

Verda: And I’m Virta Alexander. Morning John. How are you doing?

Jon: Morning Verta. How are you doing? You ready to break some dishes? I am always, God, I’m in such a mood to break things today. What a week I’m having.

Verda: Well, and today we’ve got a really interesting guest.

Jon: Unusual, right? We kind of went off our typical palette, I feel.

Verda: Yeah. We

Jon: took a bit of a risk, didn’t we? Yeah. What do you think? I’m glad we took a risk. I think that, you know, we have to be careful not to get stuck in our own little rut forever. So I’m kind of excited that we broke free of it and, and sort of found a new voice.

Thanks. So, what do you think about the fact that we decided to talk to somebody new and different today? We’re keeping it very cloak and dagger, aren’t we?

Nicole: Yeah. Why do you keep doing that, John? You keep wanting to like hold the suspense for everyone. I know.

Jon: I know. I’m dying of suspense. Who is it, Verna?

Verda: I’m going to do the reveal. We are talking to an astronaut, which is pretty cool. Pretty cool,

Jon: right? That’s pretty cool. I feel like I’ve always wanted to spend time with an astronaut.

Verda: I always wanted to be an astronaut.

Jon: Yeah. I did not

Verda: until I found out I didn’t have 2020 vision and I would never get picked.

Then I, then I shifted gears, you know,

Jon: I don’t think you have to have 2020 vision anymore to be an astronaut. I

Verda: thought you did, but it’s just as well. I think it would have, I would have never. Yeah,

Jon: I think I would be a little claustrophobic.

Verda: Yeah. I remember. And I mean, this isn’t exactly about being an astronaut, but do you have these vivid memories of certain things in high school?

Like especially fails, like I completely failed this assignment and In physics,

Jon: not my best class, where

Verda: I was supposed to build a rocket ship and in big, bold letters on the instructions was don’t make your rocket ship white.

Jon: But that’s the color they all are. I don’t understand that rule.

Verda: And I know I didn’t even think about it.

So mine was white. Mine was the only white one. Of course, like we launched it.

Jon: Wait, did you know you had a problem when everybody showed up and yours was the only white one? Or were your friends like, Vernon, didn’t you read the instructions?

Verda: It’s just because I couldn’t follow instructions. You know, so here’s the design fail in high school.

Yeah, it should

Jon: have been all black. You’re a designer. It should have been all black.

Verda: Well, anyways, design fail. And I, yeah, as a designer, that was like my first big failure. So Elon

Jon: but if that’s your only failure that you made it white. I mean, did it, did it take off?

Did it fly?

Verda: Yeah, it flew. But anyways, we digress. So an astronaut

Jon: Yeah, Nicole Stott. And we met her at a conference we were both attending called sea change up in Burlington, Vermont. And she really, I, you know, what really drew me to her was she, I, well, I mean, I’ve never spent time with an astronaut, so I can’t generalize and say all astronauts are like this, but I thought that Nicole had a really unique perspective on the planet and how we should be treating the planet and how we should behave.

And so I really wanted to dig into that with her.

Verda: Yeah, let’s do it.

Jon: Let’s do it. Let’s see what Nicole STO is all about.

Verda: Hi Nicole. How are

Nicole: you doing? Hello. I am well. Thanks for having me.

Verda: usually you want to talk to astronauts because you want to know all about zero gravity and what’s it like to blast off and be out there in outer space, but we’re here.

To understand how outer space has changed your perspective on humanity and the planet earth. You’ve spoken quite a bit about that. You have a book on that. Um, of course we might want to hear a few stories about zero gravity too, so

Nicole: highly recommended. Yeah.

Verda: You can tell us

Jon: a little bit.

Verda: Yeah.

Jon: But yeah, it is.

This is an unusual guest for us. Yeah. We’re always focused on, you know, our, our climate. Heroes, people that are usually very ordinary people that have sort of stepped into an extraordinary situation. And one of the things I like about this season is we talk to these people and it’s not like Hollywood.

There’s not nice, neat, wrapped up endings. You know, a lot of times it’s work in progress. So this is an opportunity for us to talk to somebody who’s been in extraordinary situation and had some extraordinary opportunities.

Nicole: Well, you know, I, first of all, thanks for including me. The way you describe that, the, the, um, guests that you have on the podcast kind of reminds me of who [00:05:00] astronauts really are, like these ordinary people that somewhere along the way had an opportunity to do something, you know, took advantage of a, you know, something going on at work that was offered up or, you know, and I realized not a lot of us have gotten to do this, but I really feel like that’s, You know, if more people when they met us just treated us like ordinary people that got to do something a little unusual, I think we’d get a lot more value out of what, what the experience was.

Um, and I don’t have any problem talking about, um, floating in space and what it’s like to be there because it is extraordinary. But I think most astronauts come back to earth, if not all with kind of this need to take action as a result of the experience. and climate is one of those places that becomes like a really obvious.

thing to get involved with, or just the environment around you, the situational awareness we need to have about the way our planet behaves and how it responds to what we’re doing, what nature is doing, kind of the evolution of life on earth. We need to be aware of that so that we can take the necessary actions to where we can to maintain that quality of life, perhaps improve.

That quality of life uh, and I think we get a lot of visibility of that from space, both visually as well as through the science that we’re doing.

Verda: maybe Nicole, you could tell us what is the overview effect

Nicole: you know, one of the, one of the things that’s said about the overview effect is that you can only experience it by going into space.

And I would argue that that’s absolutely not true. I think one of the big points of it, you know, this experience that astronauts have seeing Earth from space, um, Frank White, an amazing philosopher, came up with those two words to describe what he thought, you know, what, As he was contemplating, what will human beings take away from seeing Earth as a planet in space?

And how connected we all are, And, the awe and wonder that comes from seeing your planetary home, feeling it, you know, watching it like with the mute button on, but being so immersed in it that you struggle to tear yourself away from the window. It is that extraordinary. And you know, what I’ve come back to earth with, um, from it is that, you know, I can look out of my backyard and now.

feel that same way. And I want everybody to be able to do that, to open yourselves up your heart, your mind, to the on wonder that surrounds us every day. And then bring that actively, bring that into your daily life. As you remind yourself of this planet and space that you live on and how, You have a very important role as a crewmate and not a passenger here, we really do have the power to make life better for all life on earth if we choose to do that.

Jon: We were talking about, you know, it was always men, and it was like test pilots that were kind of cowboys, and they had this persona. And I think today, when we think of astronauts, they’re engineers, and they’re scientists, and they’re teachers, and they’re Right. So it’s a much broader spectrum today than it used to be.

Nicole: Yeah. And I mean, it’s one of the things I love about the human spaceflight program, and I don’t know what the secret sauce is, but somehow over the years that we’ve managed to just pull in all flavor human, you know, to help, you know, bring their experiences to bear, to solve the problems we have, to overcome the challenges.

If it’s, you know, getting off the planet into space or the science we’re going to do there. even those really hard core test piloting guys that were the original, you know, the original Mercury 7, their reflections on the experience are very similar to those that, you know, my, my like contemporaries are having.

you know, those guys were poets and artists and musicians that wanted that to not only be part of the missions they were doing, but they wanted that to be part of the way they. expressed the experience they had, you know, after coming back to earth. you know, we want to take our re our humanity with us there, but we want to bring it back and figure out how to share it in a way that makes that human connection too. Yeah.

Jon: I was looking at NASA and I, and I saw that they have, you know, these four public facing goals, right?

Expand human knowledge through scientific discoveries, extend human presence to the moon and on towards Mars, sustainable long term exploration, development, and utilization, catalyze economic growth and drive innovation to address national challenges, enhance capabilities and operations, catalyze current, future mission success.

So these are. You know, about the planet, which I think, but then when I’m on NASA’s website, such a great resource for quantity, there’s so much data that they share. So I’m like, why can’t they make that one of their goals?

Nicole: You know, it’s, it’s embedded in there. And I I’m with you. I wish that it could just be this.[00:10:00]

You know, if you look at, for instance, if you look at the international space station program, the like tagline for the international space station program is off the earth for the earth, the mission of the station through the science.

is ultimately about improving life on earth. Everything we’re doing there, the way the international partnerships are put in place, the science that we’re doing there, the way we’ve built the space station, you know, the best example of living off the grid you can find and how we bring all that back to earth.

It’s, it’s all ultimately about improving life on earth. And then in parallel with that, you have You know, some science, some of the ways we’ve built the station, the way we’re working together. That’s also about extending our exploration off the planet as well. Everything about it, in one way or another, comes back to Earth in a positive way.

And I don’t, I’m not a fan of this overarching word, but I think it is like the overarching mission of NASA as a whole is to improve life on earth, regardless of whether we’re going with a robot to Mars or to Pluto, um, or we’re taking humans, you know, off the earth to the station or onto the moon or onto Mars or wherever else, you know, I look forward to the Star Trek future, but, one of the greatest things that NASA has done in terms of that kind of communication, uh, supporting, uh, you know, climate related, um, problem solving and activities is They’ve established something called the Earth Information Center, and it’s housed at NASA headquarters.

It’s in a public space, but it’s this real time compilation of all the data that’s coming from all of NASA’s different Earth observation satellites. And it compiles in a way that like, Oh my gosh, now I understand what they mean when they say global warming and this idea of one degree or 1. 5 degrees and how that relates to the planet as a whole, how that relates to climate changing.

I mean, those two words seem to be so complicated to people. And then when you really think about it, it’s like, Yeah, the weather’s different here now than it was before. And here’s how we can understand why that’s happened, how it’s happening, and perhaps what we can even do to help, You know, prevent it from continuing in the wrong direction.

And it’s such a beautiful presentation

Verda: And now you’re not too long ago, just a. Two years ago published a book called Back to Earth, what Life in Space taught me about our home planet and our mission to protect it.

Nicole: Yeah. You know, I’d had people encouraging me to write a book, and I think most of them were encouraging me to write the, here Nicole became an astronaut book, I felt like, man, if I’m going to write a book, I really want it to be you know, something that they might not know about what we’re doing in space that is all about improving life on Earth.

every morning when we wake up on that machine, before we can do any science, before we can do any repairs, any work One of the first things we have to do is check how much carbon dioxide’s in our atmosphere.

We have to check how much clean drinking water we have. We have to make sure that that metal hole that’s surrounding us, that, that the integrity is still there of that metal hole, that’s that thin, super thin metal hole that’s surrounding us, protecting us from the, you know, that deadly vacuum of space.

And then we absolutely have to check on the health and well being of all of our crewmate. if we don’t do that, we don’t survive there. it’s just the perfect example for how we should be behaving on our planetary spaceship.

Jon: the space station is your planet, and if you don’t pay attention to it, you don’t take care of it, you die. That’s the challenge we have with climate back here on planet Earth, is We can still get away with not taking care of it and not being responsible.

Nicole: I want everyone to accept their role as a crewmate that whole passenger role, that whole need to get somebody else to do it for you.

And by doing that, I mean, I really do believe we have the power to create a future for all life on Earth. That’s as beautiful as it looks from space. there is power.

There’s strength in doing the little things, you know, this whole idea. Oh, well, what could I possibly do? Well, you can do a lot. And if everybody was doing a little bit, that it’s amazing how that adds up. The same thing is true on a space station.

Verda: We need positivity in this climate fight for sure. And I think we do need to encourage everybody that you can’t be a complacent passenger. We really all have to step up and do our part.

Nicole: And there’s so much going on, right? You guys are pointing it out on every one of your shows. There’s so much happening.

There’s this amazing crewmates that we have already that are doing really incredible things. beyond that, we need to have people that are show showing us how to get it done and that they’re doing it and how it can be part of it.

Jon: We have to actually behave like responsible crew [00:15:00] members. I love that that’s, you know, your takeaway. Cause I always worry that. We all think technology is going to save us.

Nicole: Well, I think it’s a big part of it. I mean, I want people to know what we’re doing up there that is coming back to Earth, whether that’s the science of us, you know, how our bodies react in those environments and while we can learn to, you know, manage things down here on Earth, better to take care of better care of ourselves and better care of the planet.

And all of that. I think, you know, there are things coming. There’s, there’s. There’s potential from what we’re doing in space to solve our energy problem, you know, to just do it once and for all with space based solar power, you know, or have that be a ginormous part of the solution and the way we evolve.

And so these things we’re doing, you know, we’ve been operating, you know, with solar power and space on our spacecraft for pretty much ever.

Jon: When we were up in Vermont, you and I had a conversation about that solar program, and you were invited to, to go to the Olympics. And you were telling me that you’re not going to go because of some of the decisions they’re making.

Nicole: you know, we have the opportunity to solve one of our greatest planetary challenges through the space based solar power and some other, you know, technology that’s out there that’s very sustainable, like the unlimited source from the sun, right?

and, uh, the way to bring it back, you know, bring it back to earth in a way that’s not, not as, um, You know, I’m also, I’m all for solar power down here, too. I think we need to be doing that, but we could eliminate a lot of what we do to implement solar power down here that’s damaging as well by just harnessing it directly from space.

And I discovered that, you know, the recent estimate for deploying a pretty substantive space based solar power system factory in space was in the 60 to 100 billion dollar range. that’s, that’s three to five times NASA’s annual budget for, for everything that NASA does, right?

And so I go, Oh my gosh, how are we ever going to do this if this is going to be so expensive? And then I discovered that last year’s World Cup soccer tournament was 200 billion. Oh, geez. Go figure. And, and right now, I know, you know, and right now.

Jon: What a horrible example for anything. Holy

Nicole: moly. But you know, and I got nothing against a sporting event, right?

I’ve got nothing against, against it. And then, and then I did a little bit more digging, and I forget what year it is. A couple of years from now, the Asian Winter Games are going to be held in Saudi Arabia in that whole, you know, Neom complex at where they’re having to create winter And already the estimate to do that is 600 billion. And so how, there’s some like public ability to rationalize, and maybe it’s naivety, maybe it’s not, I mean, I didn’t know those numbers before, but to rationalize that expenditures like that on a soccer tournament or a winter game somewhere is okay, but then at the same time NASA gets slammed every year for the 20 billion that’s being spent on everything that’s ultimately about improving life on earth.

And I just don’t understand. I don’t understand it. There’s big things happening in this kind of drive to adjust the, I don’t know, I probably won’t use the right lingo, but like the corporate thinking about what the return on investment, you know, longer term could be. You know, in terms of the viability of whatever company it is that you have by taking a sustainable approach to it, like not just sustaining your business, but sustainable in the environment around you so that you have customers in the future.

And then also in how you just do complete shifts in the way we’re used to. You know, generating electricity is one example of it.

Verda: What do you think is the greatest threat to life on earth? And Earth itself, besides soccer matches.

Nicole: Well, maybe that’s part of it. I mean, I think it’s us, right? It’s this whole and I, and it, and maybe it’s oversimplified. I think it really is this crewmate passenger mentality. and then I think it extends beyond that the people who do have through the corporate world or privately or whatever, not just the financial, but the, I don’t, the influential means to be able to shift things in a way that it drives positive change.

I mean, I, I know I’m [00:20:00] oversimplifying it, but that’s a very crewmate thing to do versus saying, okay, well, you know what? I’ve got the money because I encountered this at, at Davos. You know, I, everyone I spoke to told me 60 to a hundred billion dollars is not a lot of money. Right. And then I’m like, okay, How about you find a few of your friends, you get together, pick whatever the, you know, planetary challenge du jour might be and just do it, do it.

don’t be the passenger waiting for somebody else to do it. Because there’s enough flexibility in the way we can deploy these solutions that you don’t have to wait for the government to do it.

There might be some regulations you have to, you know, account for and that kind of thing. But to put something big out there like that, as, especially as a solution that’s, that’s planetary, I’m convinced that can be done. And so I think we, I really think, you know, not the planet. The three of us, for sure.

But the, the collective we, it’s the, you know, is the problem. It’s like, come on, let’s just, you know,

Verda: you know, just do it. It reminds me of this book that I read, probably one of the first books I read when I went down this climate change path called Donut Economics. It proposes that our economy and the world is like a donut.

And we have this planetary boundaries to our economic system. And we can’t we absolutely cannot overshoot that donut, right? That planetary boundary. And I think that, I think that’s a large part of why you’re on this mission is because you’ve seen that planet from outer space. And you understand that it’s a contained, like you call it spaceship earth, right?

It’s a contained thing. We’re in, we’re, we’re moving, we’re moving fast,

Nicole: right? Yeah. I mean, we’re spinning right now at a thousand miles an hour, right? And um, as much as, you know, we see it rain again, and there’s, you know, I, it’s, it is a closed loop system with, uh, you know, a, a finite amount of resources within that, you know, the boundary of that thin blue line.

And And what space offers us as well, you know, outside of that boundary is a way to bring other resources to bear, you know, that are just not available to us here. But whether you like Jeff Bezos or not, his whole motivation, if you go look at his website, the top line is for the benefit of earth. And since he was a kid, that’s been his whole goal.

I’m going to form a company that’ll make enough money that I can take us to space and we can live in O’Neillian habitats and we can lift the industry off the planet, turn earth into this. I mean, it’s, you know, go back and listen to his high school valedictorian speech. It’s there. You know, there’s, there’s people out there that are, are wanting to, okay, how do we access that resource that’s available to us?

in a way that benefits life on earth.

Jon: I’m feeling a little more optimistic talking to Nicole. Yeah, I

Verda: am too. I, I, although, although my one concern with, with all of that, and I think it’s probably the concern that a lot of people have when they, when they do criticize Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk is that it’s, it’s also not about just continuing to expand our, uh, area of what we can mine and extract from, right?

Cause then we’re not really solving our problem that humanity has created for itself, which is basically over consuming on this planet. That would be my one fear.

Nicole: Yeah. And I think, you know, I can’t speak for everybody that’s in the space industry for sure. There’s a lot going on, but my general sense from, you know, the community that I engage in is that they are.

Trying to be thoughtful about that, right? You know, um, on a couple of your podcasts, of course, the plastic thing comes up. You guys are actively involved with that whole thing as well. And, you know, I love it when I see things like we’re making new products out of recycled plastics or something. I mean, there’s always that balance, right?

But you know, like, let’s reuse what, what we’ve created and turn it into something else that that’s useful. And And as we’re doing that, figure out what’s the life cycle of that going to be and how we’re going to, you know, um, manage that when the life of that new product is done. But bottom line, we got to stop producing that stuff So the same thing is happening in space. You know, the acknowledgement of the fact that. Throughout the years of space exploration, there’s stuff orbiting the earth.

There’s stuff in space that, you know, is thought of as debris or trash in space right now. I’ve heard there’s a lot of that up there. There is. So there’s, there’s companies that there, there was just a, um, a really great, um, test of this little robotic, uh, this little robotic machine that it’s going to go up and like recover some of that.

Right. And, um, and some of which could be burnt up in the atmosphere. I know that sounds like it might be a bad thing, but it’s one of the best ways to, to [00:25:00] rid ourselves of trash. And then how do we perhaps collect that in a way that we can repurpose it in space, build something out of else out of it, And you know, thinking about it proactively now, like, okay, if we’re going to be doing these things with spaceships and.

Stuff in space. And whether that’s bringing your resource back to earth or deploying something, uh, or establishing our presence on the moon in a way that’s sustainable, you know, providing for, uh, and I, I joked about the Star Trek future, but I’m serious about it too. At some point, we’re not going to be the problem with the planet.

Our son is, you know, and that’s a billion or so years from now. But if we really are thinking about the legacy and how humanity, you know, if we want us to You know, move forward forever, you know, we’ve got to get out of our own solar system. And so that exploration is, is important. It’s very, very far out.

We’ve got to be thoughtful about the way we do it.

Verda: You know, John, it made me think of Bayou Dave. I think it’s our third episode of this season and he picks up, he’s on a barge in the bayou outside of Houston and he’s got, he’s a, like a MacGyver. He’s created all these incredible contraptions to pick plastic bags out of trees and, and bottles out of, out of waterways and things like that.

Jon: Yeah. You know, in space, it’s not very, Forgiving, right? It’s a pretty hostile environment. And I think there’s little margin for error. So we ought to be able to figure out how to do it, you know, down here on planet earth too.

Nicole: Yeah. Well, and that’s everything. That’s water. I I’ll have to go look for sure, but I think right now, 90 percent of our clean drinking water is generated from recycling all of, all of the water, the moisture that we create, you know, all of our urine is recycled in a clean drinking water or sweat or, yeah, it’s, it’s incredible.

And I know. And so, um, I mean, we used to take water to space, you know, refill the tanks and we’re not having, and water’s heavy. It’s why we suck all the water out of our food when we get these dehydrated shrimp cocktails or whatever else. Because water weighs a lot. So you don’t want to waste, you know, your up mass with just be sending water in your food.

So you add it in when you’re there. But Okay, wait. How does the food

Jon: taste when you’re eating it and it’s dehydrated? packets. Is it horrible?

Nicole: No, it’s actually really good. I mean, it’s, it’s a lot like camping food, right? Or the military rations ready to eat out of the packages or whatever, but it’s gotten a lot better.

And you know, that whole international side of the space station is pretty interesting too, because we get food from all the different partner agencies. So like my favorite dinner was Japanese curries and. And it’s pretty cool what you can reconstitute into something that like looks and tastes like, you know, the food you want to eat nutritionally.

It’s got some work to do

Verda: to tie this back a little bit to our other guests and how they’re working within their own communities. And maybe your communities just. is just bigger. Maybe it just is the planet. But what community do you call home? And is there something that you’re specifically doing within your community to protect it?

Nicole: Uh, well, I mean, I guess I think of the planet as my community and I think in everything I’m doing locally, I, I like to consider how that could be a global impact to And so, um, I’ve tried to become more active, uh, in understanding just, you know, and something that I’ve never loved or had any desire to be a part of, and I don’t want to run for anything, but I want to better understand who my local representatives are, what You know what their policies or what they believe in and how pushing those things, either, you know, one way or the other, whether I like it or not, I want to understand that, um, I’ve, my husband and I have tried to take a more active role in, um, there’s a community development program here in St.

St. Petersburg where they have like this 10 year program. You know, what they consider 10 years to be the short term, like what should we be doing sustainably within ST Petersburg as a city to ensure that as we build, as we grow, that we’re considering, um, the environment and the impacts we’re having on it by doing that.

That’s great. Um, yeah, I mean, you know, and then just into my our own house, you know, we, I don’t know, about seven years ago, we went Totally plant based and I, I will admit that my husband would not have done that by choice as doctors told him to do that. So, you know, that gave me the opportunity to really jump on it.

But I think there’s the more and more I learn about, um, like local sourcing of food, where my food is coming from. And it’s, it’s interesting to, to discover that. You know, I think people, if they, if they started paying attention to it, they’d be like, Oh my gosh. What do you mean that fruit was grown in [00:30:00] this, this part of the, or those nuts were grown in this part of the world?

And then they were put on a ship to go get deshelled in some other part of the planet. And then they were sent back to me to my grocery store and, you know, I mean, that is mind boggling to me. It’s mind boggling. And anybody I’ve told about that, they’re like, Oh my gosh, they want to pay attention now, you know, and it’s little things like that that are just, I think, you know, we have this curiosity about that kind of stuff.

And if we. You know, kind of play with that. It becomes impactful as well.

Verda: You’re doing all the right things. Just having conversations is a huge thing that everyone can do. Just talking about it, just like you said, and then getting involved in politics, understanding who your legislators are and supporting them and policy and all of that.

So those are some of the biggest, biggest things that you can do. Yeah.

Nicole: And my mom fought me forever on the plastic straw, right? You know, she could have, She couldn’t get it. She’s like, what is it? You know, it’s that one thing. What is my not having a straw going to do? You know, the woman will not take one at a restaurant anymore.

And thankfully in St. Pete, you’re not allowed to have them anymore. So you know, so that’s a good thing. But it’s like, how, how can you not understand that? And I think she gets it now.

Verda: Wonderful way to end. Thank you.

Jon: Yeah. What a way to wrap it up. Yeah. Thank you, Nicole.

Verda: John, she was great. What a wonderful person.

Jon: You know, sometimes when we do an episode, it forces us to do a little bit of research and learn new things that probably ordinarily we wouldn’t take the time to dig into. And it did give me an opportunity to kind of dig into NASA a little bit, you know, because when I was on their website was amazed at how informative it was around climate and some of the climate changes that they’re able to measure using their science and technology, which I think is really cool.

But then when I read their mission statements and everything, nothing really comes out about Saving the planet or making the planet a better place. And I think that there’s a juxtaposition there, isn’t there? Between like NASA and the planet.

Verda: Yeah. I think you’re hitting the, what is it hitting the hammer on the head or nail on the head.

Right. With all of that, I did have a little bit of, she was great and her perspective was amazing, but I did have a little bit of conflict thinking about space travel, space exploration, what NASA is doing. And I think. You know, maybe we can spend a little time with a hot seat provocation for our audience here.

So, like you said, NASA, so their tagline is space exploration unites the world to inspire the world. And my first thought is like, why do we have to go to outer space to unite the world? Right? Right. It’s crazy, right? But they do, they do do some good things, right? They talk about better understanding the planet and the universe.

And there’s a lot of really interesting science and data that is being captured and gathered up and up there in outer space. I also heard recently that, that they are working on, I don’t know if it’s NASA, but whoever’s out there working in outer space is trying to harness solar power, creating solar panel stations in outer space to bring back that solar power to Earth.

I mean, it could solve the energy crisis.

Jon: Yeah. She mentioned that. That they’ve been using solar panels in space for decades.

Verda: Yeah, yeah. And this article came out recently about harnessing solar power in space. But I think there’s two big issues. A lot of the space industry is becoming privatized and they are not thinking about the pollution out there.

So it’s kind of like we’ve polluted this planet and now we’re going to go out there and pollute outer space. Don’t you? Didn’t that come to your mind as we were speaking with Nicole here and there? I feel like,

Jon: like if you make a mess, you clean up the mess. You don’t just go somewhere else where there isn’t a mess anymore.

Yeah. I mean, there’s

Verda: thousands, 1800 satellites, I think, orbit Earth and there are half a million pieces of space debris out there and they don’t float. Fly through the air at 17, 000 miles an hour and they hit things. I mean, it’s kind of dangerous I was reading about some kind of recently a net Concept that was that was tested like this net went out there and captured.

Oh my god flying projectiles of trash and and it costs I don’t know how much 18 million dollars just to do this one test to capture a little piece of trash in outer space So it’s it’s a crazy problem that they’re gonna have to figure out On top of that. Yeah, the um, you know the spacex that these right?

Yeah, the more and more being launched and so there’s the exhaust. They run on methane and they leave a big gray cloud of exhaust fumes that stays in the outer [00:35:00] atmosphere. Nobody knows exactly what the effect of that will be and then they burn, right? The stuff falls back down to earth, falls into the ocean and that’s been okay for Decades, but for how long can that be?

Okay, right. I mean, at some point we’re and and the problem too Is that part of the reason we’re doing this? I think Elon Musk wants to have us handle on Travel like like maybe like maybe someday we can get from the United States to Australia right in like an hour because we go up and outer space up down and back down, right?

Mm hmm

Verda: and so Why? Because we already know air travel is terrible for the planet, and we probably should be doing a lot less of it. And here we’re trying to do it in a way that’s even more, a hundred times worse for the planet.

Jon: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and that comes down to convenience. So that’s our biggest challenge with climate change is nobody wants to be inconvenienced with it, right?

But just to back up a little bit, Nicole is amazing, right? I think that What she has accomplished, uh, in her career and her life is, is worth noting and talking about, and I’m so grateful that she took time to join us. And I do think that I love her perspective that start acting like a crew member and stop acting like a passenger on this planet, and maybe we’ll be able to do something about climate change.

I love that that’s her mentality and more of us should adapt. that mentality. I do want to say to Verda that we don’t think about all of the repercussions of this space travel. You’re right. And it’s because we talked about this, but I worry that sometimes we lean too much on technology and we think, well, we don’t really have to mitigate our behavior for climate because we’re just going to engineer our way out of this problem.

Verda: Huge. And I think there’s an opportunity here to do things right. It seems like we’re already going down this path where government is taking a backseat, private companies and corporations, which we know don’t have the best interest of people and planet in mind are taking over. And it’s not too late to make space exploration, space discovery, space science, all of that truly good for humanity and truly something that will help us.

Solve for this climate crisis.

Jon: I think that part of the challenge is that because it’s in the free market now it becomes a race. It becomes a race for technology and now the end game is speed to technology and it’s not necessarily tapping the brakes and taking a look around and seeing, you know, are we hurting things?

Are we helping things? Can we, can we do something a little bit differently that may take more time, but it’s a better, we’re not doing any of that. It’s just. Billionaires that, and I know we sound really negative right now. We sound really doom and gloom and you know, we’re, I feel like you and I are very sensitive to not wanting to be just a doom and gloom podcast where all we do is bitch and moan about, you know, people doing things, but, but the space travel, I mean, I, I was just reading that.

Space travel emits and we know that when you look at global greenhouse gas emissions, transportation is what, like 25 percent and the building industry is 40 percent and but for space travel, um, space travel emits 100 times. The carbon into the atmosphere that normal airline travel emits. So imagine if we get a whole industry of space travel out there.

Yeah. Yeah, it does.

Verda: Right now it’s just 1 percent of all of aviation travel. But as they, yeah, it’s just, it’s in its, it’s in its baby phase, nascent phase. And I think it’s just, it’s not that I’m not, I don’t feel doom and gloom at all. I’m just trying to raise awareness here that, that it’s something that we need to consider and look at.

I think Nicole. her perspective because she was able to get up there and out there and see the planet as this contained thing that it changed her perspective. And I think that that’s what we need to remember that the planet is, is a limited, thing that we need to care for.

Jon: It’s not disposable. Yeah. So.

Yeah. And I, and I also got the impression from Nicole that you don’t get the impression or you don’t, you don’t truly feel like you’re living on a planet until you’re in space and you’re looking down on your planet, then it occurs to you. So interesting perspective. I’m so glad that we had a chance to talk to her.

I feel like I learned a lot about space travel.

Verda: Yeah. So hopefully these hot seat provocations made you think a little and Nicole’s perspective as well. Thank you guys for joining.

Jon: So thanks to Nicole Stott for joining us in this episode. We love to hear about the issues that you’d like us to address. Be [00:40:00] sure to let us know by leaving a positive review wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can also ask your hot seat questions there.

Verda: Breaks and Dishes is a surround podcast by Sandow Design Group. Thanks to the team behind the scenes. This episode is produced by Rob Schulte and edited by Rob Adler.

Jon: Thanks to master and dynamic for the official headphones of the surround network, you can hear other podcasts like this one at surround podcasts.

com.