 So, as none of us know actually what an astronaut augury is, and so we come as an astronaut family to answer all of your questions. Has it not been the greatest day? Good day. I mean, even when you know it's coming, you know you're going to come here, you're going to hear things that you've not even imagined could make you think, well, maybe, right? It's just, it's simply amazing. And then, I don't know how many of you got to see that at 3.14 this afternoon, three more humans left the earth for the, I was going to say for the first time, but actually two of them, two of them had an aborted launch just a few months ago, which is not a usual thing for us. So, it was probably a pretty amazing day for Nick Hagan, Alexi, and Christina, her first launch, and they are in space waiting to dock, excuse me, waiting to dock with the International Space Station today. I will let, let's see, I guess we'll just take a seat. I'm going to be in the middle. I'm going to be in the middle? Okay, kind of. We had good chemistry being in the middle. We already actually practiced on them. We've been on this couch before. Speak for yourself. Anyways, so we thought we would just start with a few slides to introduce ourselves and some of the things that we've done. I didn't get to put your last things in there, so we're just like a little bit of a mishmash. We embrace the F word, flexibility. Things that are the flexible, for they are never disappointed. It's one of my favorite quotes. So, I wanted to show the space shuttle, because the three of us have all flown on the space shuttle, and it's a really amazing, special experience to leave the planet in a vehicle built by so many people, and the fact that it could bring so many people to space has meant a lot to the program to bring so many more different kinds of people to space. I myself flew on one space shuttle, Space Shuttle Columbia, twice on a laboratory mission, getting ready for the International Space Station, doing 30 different science experiments, and then a second mission for me as a chemist, a really unusual mission, to be in charge of launching the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and so to see that several times in the slides this morning that Sam Ting showed, it means a lot to me. It was a telescope that when we launched it, first of all, there's people that had waited their entire careers, 25 years from the time they thought of it, to the time it launched, knowing that if they put it up there, we would see things and discover things and understand the universe in a different way, which in the case of Chandra, which specializes in high energy events like supernovas, galaxies colliding, and black holes, as we just explained, Chandra has really shown a light on the universe, and it's only supposed to work for five years. That was back in 1999. It is still working today. Our mission was also famous because we had the first woman commander, and that is Colonel Eileen Collins, and it was really just a pleasure to serve with the first woman commander of the Space Shuttle and experience a different kind of management style than I was used to. And at the same time, that's true. It can be a little bit military there, even though only 40 percent of the astronauts are military. And let's see. And these are the three folks that launched today. This is Nick Hague and Christina in the middle and Alexei Avchenin. And maybe you can say that better for me, Nikolai. So Alexei Avchenin, he's a Russian cosmonaut, actually commander of the Soyuz Vehicle, which has already been launched. Christina Cook, she used to be my crewmate when we were in the backup crew just a few months ago, actually a little bit more than one year. And Nick Hague, he's an American astronaut. He's a great professional. And so they are on the way to International Space Station right now after launch. They're doing a lot of checks of spacecraft, of docking and rendezvous systems, and pretty soon they will dock to ISS and their expedition will start. So Nikolai, I'm about a professional panel person. I'm usually like on the panel as opposed to moderating. So maybe we'll all just introduce ourselves. Nikolai, why don't you just say we want to slide, just to just say a little bit about your background? And I've been preparing to space flight since 20 late 2012. I graduated from South Russian Technical University as computer science and control system engineer. And I was selected to cosmonaut core in October 2012. And so I'm on my way to International Space Station and beyond, I hope. Thank you. Nicole is next. We've also got one more crew member coming. You have quite an agenda today. And but it sounds like he'll be able to make it in a few minutes. Tony Antonelli, but Nicole, why don't you go ahead? Nicole Stott. I seems like I worked for NASA forever. It was with NASA for about 28 years and started out at the Kennedy Space Center with the Space Shuttle and the Space Station program. I think we met there when you were getting ready to fly. That's your first time. And and then spent a couple of years at the Johnson Space Center as a flight engineer on the shuttle training aircraft, which was such a cool airplane where we trained the astronauts to land the space shuttle selected by some act of God, I would say in the year 2000 as an astronaut way back when and have been blessed to fly two times in space to and from the Space Station both times on the Space Shuttle first time up on Discovery, little over three months on the station and then home on Atlantis with with Leland. And then about a year later on the final flight of Discovery back to the station, but only for two weeks, which was absolutely not long enough. And I believe you had to pull my clawing hands off the hatch to get me shoved back in the shuttle. That's true. She did not want to go. Leland. Hi, Leland Melvin. I was one of these people that played some football with the Lions and the Cowboys before joining NASA. As one does. As many people do. I thought about it. I was busy and calm. But when I went to NASA, you know, I was working as a research research scientist and NASA Langley and a friend of mine gave me an application and said, hey, you'd be a great astronaut. I'm like, yeah, right. And I threw it down. And this other friend of ours, Charlie Kamarda, he got into the astronaut program and I said to myself, wait a minute, NASA is letting knuckleheads like that in to be astronauts. And so I applied the next election I got in and I had a a serious medical issue. I lost all my hearing in a training accident in the neutral buoyancy laboratory. And they told me that I would never fly in space, but I just stayed diligent and persisted and flew two times 2008-2009 on both on Atlantis. And we installed the Columbus laboratory to the space station. And I thought that we're going to get on some more stuff. So anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Yep. OK, and I'm Katie Coleman, an affiliate of the media lab here. And Tony Antonelli coming up. Tony. OK, so we're actually just telling a little bit about ourselves and we're doing a few slides. What's your story? Who are you? What's your story? What who are you and why are you sitting on this couch? You have a mindless. It's not wired. I see. I'm not Russian, not an artist, not super talented, wasn't drafted in the NFL. Yeah. But I have big dreams. I hope to become something grand in my life. I was MIT, Core 16 a while ago. Were y'all saying years? Are we leaving that out? You can leave it out. It was a while ago and I'm happy to be here. I'm more excited than y'all to hear their stories because I know they're awesome. And we actually never get to hear each other's stories. Except for a little bit at 3 o'clock today when we're talking to the kids. Yeah. So we were just talking about how these great folks launched today and just to show you a little bit more about what they're getting into and what that was like. We don't have the actual launch footage for them, but I have a little of mine. And anybody who wants to jump in and say things, it's a free-for-all in this case. But I like to show people. It's the size of a football field? Wow. There's not a football field in space, though. I know about the football field. And I know the ball is shaped a little strange, OK? The only place I can throw a ball well is up in space. And Leland knows that. But I do like to show this for size. We don't live on the part that's like goal post to goal post, but we live on the 50-yard line there in those modules, which is like giant school buses without the seats in them. About 10 of them all strung together, but some are up and some are down. And so when we travel up, it's in the Soyuz. And you'll see that in a minute. It's really small. We're sitting closer than we're sitting right here. And yet once we get up into space, it's really lots and lots of space. This is the Soyuz itself. Do you want to describe it, Nikola? Yeah. Oops, that. Yeah. There's lots of them. So this is the Soyuz spacecraft. It has three modules, actually. Cosmonauts and astronauts are in the center of the Soyuz spacecraft, we call it just capsule or descending module. And there is a service module with all stuff, like computers, trusters, and batteries, et cetera. And on the top of the Soyuz, you can see a living room, actually. And it's really like a living room. We don't really use it except for when we're going to be in space for a little bit, like the planned rest before docking. Actually, we use it like a cargo room. Yeah. And on the top, there are a lot of antennas, which is very useful to measure parameters of docking and rendezvous. So that's it. So about 6 PM tonight, the docking probe, they'll approach the space station and actually dock, do a lot of pressure checks, open the hatch, and there are almost six months in space. We'll begin. How big is it? You said it's like a living room. So I got like a couch, a love seat, a lazy boy. You got a divan. It's like three smart cars put together. I mean, it's really pretty tiny. It's a little bit bigger than a descent model, because the descent model is the size like a backseat, I said, or the Mini Cooper. Yeah. And it's living room like a backseat of Suburban or something like that, the SUV. And we see this in training, and it's this big space. And we practice going up there and what little compartments to open, how to start up the bathroom, things like that. And then when you arrive for launch, every square inch of that thing is packed. And there's like no place. But fortunately, once you get to space, you're not going to sit on anything. You're just going to be floating around in three dimensions. You actually have more room than you think. So this is a static picture of that that Soyuz. It's inside that rocket. Right on the top, this is tiny part of the rocket. This actually, this is the Soyuz. And 95% of this huge thing, it's just a rocket. Right, it's propulsion. Yeah, there are three stages. And on the top, right on the top, there is a Soyuz and launch abort system on top. OK. Hey, Steve, I'm just puzzled by the clock. Because it says 14 minutes, but I thought we had 45 total. No. It changed? No. Really? This is a fast one. This is super fast. Ariel said 45? OK. There's a lot of ear morphers to say. No, but seriously, what do you want us to do? Keep going. OK, we're going. Every second. OK, there we go. Can't take my minutes away from me, OK? But this, I mean, we're watching, this is eight years ago for me inside here. But this just happened this afternoon to three real people on their way to space. And two of them for the very first time to actually get to orbit. This is my favorite scene. This is about a two-minute movie here. It's my favorite scene in the movie because it's like what life is like up there, flying from place to place, working up every day upside down, right side up. There's our table at a diagonal, right? Oh, wow. And we're humans up there. And that's what we've been hearing a lot about today, is that all of us bring our own kind of way to bring others with us. And it's also the way that we connect together. That's a famous picture, really, in a way of the shuttle and the station docked together, taken as our crew left the station. And this gives you an idea of what it's like to look out that window. We don't see Aurora Australis like this every day. Probably I saw it about a dozen times. Depends on the sun cycle. But we do get to look out and see the Earth. This is a little faster than it really goes around. It's sped up a little bit. It was a little disturbing to me to see it at first. But it's always nice to see home from my family. That's Ireland. And then gradually, for me, that shifts to just feeling like the whole planet is home. And it almost got to feel like a non sequitur to have some sort of a country patch on my shirt or my jacket. And so that's the space station where they're arriving. And Nicole and I have lived. This was our crew of three people. This is what will happen with Christina and Nick and Alexei as their families will be in mission control, getting to say hello to them just moments after they arrive on the space station. That's Dimitri's son on the right and his wife and my son and my husband, Josh, who you heard from earlier today. And my last slide here just shows you what I think it's interesting to join the worlds together. Josh made this kind of art showing different worlds and what it was like to explore them a dozen years before we ever met. They did get cheaper for me after I got married. Yeah. And we get to bring a few things up to space with us when we're station crew members, a few more than usual. And I actually couldn't take these pictures until really the day before I left because we had a shuttle crew up there. It really takes somebody to help take the pictures and somebody to spot and me to do the thing. And we really, we were so busy, we just didn't have the time as a crew of six to be taken those kinds of things. And I'll just hand this over in celebration of art. I will hand this over to Nicole. So I just wanted to share a little bit about, I think most things in life, it comes down to the people you get to share it with. And of course, on the couch today with two of them that I got to spend some time and space with. And going back also to that class of 2000, the young man on the end who's still looking for his grandeur, I think, is we were part of the same class, the Bugs in 2000. So it's kind of cool to have the show and to meet somebody new who's about to go and experience I think it really is all about the people. On my first flight, that ride home on Atlantis was with Leland and then Butch's on the right side there. Jeff Williams, I spent time on the space station with. But just some of the peeps. And then, of course, that just beautiful picture of the masterpiece of station up there. And the ride home on the bottom left. And Katie and I, we didn't fly on the same vehicle to the space station together, but it was really cool to get there and have her floating and waiting for me as I came through the hatch. We worked together in that module, the cupola, which is this beautiful observatory that faces towards Earth from space. It is where astronauts are if you're not working, doing other things. And we actually got to hang out in there a little bit, but we also did some robotic work while we were there flying the arm to do who knows what. So Nicole is too modest to say that she's the first person to capture a supply ship from the space station. So it's an amazingly huge deal because the space station is like a factory, the supply ship's like a truck that pulls up. And if things go wrong, you can't move the factory. And there was a lot of things to work out between a lot of countries. It was Japanese supply ship communication system, countries around the world, mission controls around the world. And she was the queen and I was her backup. So I was the second person to do that. And actually a moment that I'll just share with you was walking into Japanese mission control. This was before it happened. And Nicole was introduced as the first person that would capture their very first supply ship. And all of mission control just bowed. They bowed. It was the weirdest thing and I'll tell ya. It keeps me till just to think about it. I still think about that because then it's like, okay, like there was no pressure before. Now, you know, it's like they're all counting on ya. Yep, and Katie did that the second time. And I think you said earlier that Sonny was supposed to be the third one to do that. We began to suspect that maybe only girls could do those things. Yeah, not true. All right, so I didn't mention before but I retired from NASA about, I guess like three and a half years ago now. But in that retirement, of course, it was a difficult decision to make to know I wouldn't fly in space again. But aside from the space stuff, we do some really interesting things just as part of the astronaut office. Not to mention getting to dive in the Nutriboyancy Lab and fly in T-38 jets and help get new missions ready. All of those things that when you retire, you don't do those things anymore. That's sad. Yeah, but once I got my warm fuzzy with that, I started thinking about, okay, so how should I, because I felt obligated to, how should I share this really special experience that I had? And when I was in space, I had the chance to paint. I painted a watercolor painting, which we could talk about that. It is different to paint with watercolors in space, but, and I will point out again, for anyone in the future, Tony, if you go private, Nikolai, when you're up there, I'll point in the wrong damn thing. This up here, so that's my watercolor kit, which is still hopefully somewhere on the space station. So anybody that happens to find themselves up there, please go and search of it, it's your mission. It would be nice to have it back. But I was able to paint in space. And it really, when I was thinking about retirement, how am I gonna, you know, what am I gonna do that's kind of different? I just kept coming back to this really special experience of getting to paint in space. And I thought, you know, art is like this universal communicator. You know, within science, we've been using art forever to communicate really complex things, not just to the general public, but among scientists themselves too. And I thought I can use art to reach audiences unlike this one that don't even know we have a space station. And get them knowing that this wonderful place exists and all of these things that we're doing in space that are really all about improving life on earth. And I can also encourage them to become, you know, consider themselves earthlings, to understand we live on a planet, to recognize, you know, the only board that's important is this thin blue line of atmosphere. And, you know, all of those kinds of things that I think really are kind of the core of what I came back to earth with. You know, we do some really complex things in space, but, and we all know we live on a planet, but I came back to earth with this just undeniable truth of, wow, we are already all in space together and we need to start acting more like that. So anyway, and that the space station is this wonderful place to, as a model of how we should be living and working here on space at birth. That art and space has come together for me, and I think you can even a more meaningful way since being back is that I can tie them together through some of these programs we've done with kids around the world, really space-themed art therapy kinds of programs and working with kids in about 30 countries now. We had the chance to paint with some kids in all of the international space station countries and use their art, our spacesuit company, ILC Dover, built them into these spacesuits. The suit on the left called Unity actually flew on the space station and the first suit we were able to have fly because we didn't think they'd let us fly one of those big ones in the discretionary cargo. So we had the kids paint on this flight suit and Kate Rubens wore it for us while she was on the station. We did a video conference with the kids down on earth, but I will just tell you, I have found through these programs more space inspires. I think there's nothing like it actually. You can go anywhere on this planet and kids are psyched about space. Adults are psyched about space and we can get kids thinking beyond their current circumstances. We can get them thinking about their futures in a really beautiful way just by inspiring them with something that has to do with space. Oh, this is me too, isn't it? Okay, you go. I'll just say that I wanted to get the MIT part in there. We had Arrow Astra's celebration of the 50th anniversary. This is actually the day I was leaving the space station. Mike and Greg Shamatov came up to install the AMS spectrometer. So I think a lot of us saw Sam Ting's talk this morning. We were the crew that was on the space station. Oh, what'd you do? I took photo. Oh, okay. I took photo for guys from this lab to design these robots. That's right. So we went to see the lab. Anyways, so this is an experiment that came from MIT and it serves both exploration rendezvous and then it also goes on to be education for thousands and thousands of kids around the world learning to do teamwork just like we're doing on the International Space Station. And Nikolai? Just a few words. So 95% of our life, it's not the space flights. It's not flying jets or something like that. So 95% we study. We just drill our skills and space flights. Pretty risky business and we have to be really, really good in these things. So that's why we spend all our time drilling, drilling and drilling. And sometimes we have surviving trainings like in the Winter Forest. Sometimes we fly jets. Sometimes we fly weightless. Our colleagues in Astronaut Corp call it womat comet. Pretty funny. And we do scuba diving. We do a lot of training. And so it takes time to be ready for the space flights. It takes years of our lives. And you cannot fly to space. You cannot be an astronaut or a cosmonaut without years of preparation and without 100% ready for the space flight. So that's what we do almost always. And sometimes we fly to space. Yeah. OK. Anthony, I've never seen these slides. But we haven't had really much to talk about, basically, piloting. Yeah. I'll be quick. And maybe we'll have time for questions? Yeah. Perfect. So two things. I also left NASA about three and a half years ago. I try to follow Nicole wherever she goes. The two thoughts about the future. Personally, I want to see humans walk on Mars. And I left NASA, but I haven't left the space community. So I'm working now on the Orion spacecraft. So we'll get humans back to the moon here real soon and then figure out how to get them on to Mars. I personally believe that with today's technology, we could do it if we had the right expedition mindset. And I think the MIT community, with the ideas of hands and minds, let's just roll up our sleeves and build something and go do it. It wouldn't be a first class journey like it might someday be in the future. But this is the community that works on hard problems and just makes stuff happen. So I'm really excited about that. And then the other piece about the future ties into what Nicole was saying, which I believe that everybody knows that they live on a planet. Show of hands. Anybody doesn't want to fly in space? Brave enough to raise your hand? A couple. So Nicole said it, right? You're flying in space right now. And you're on spaceship Earth. And I think we've got a terrific spaceship. I spent a career in the Navy, one of the things they tell you first and most importantly is take care of your ship. I won't profess to know all the answers, but I will commit myself to help and take care of the ship. We've said, so everybody knows that. The folks that have flown just a couple hundred miles up and looked down on the planet, we feel it. And I thought, oh, so I'm not an artist of, I think, any flavor. But somehow, if we flew the right artist, they could come back and communicate that feeling to the rest of the world. So the whole world should feel this. And Nicole's a fantastic painter. Chris Hatfield and Ronnie Garen play the guitar and sing. I got to believe somebody, and Katie plays the flute. I got to believe somebody has written poetry, though. There's been dancing. Al Warden, Al Warden, amazing poetry. Amazing poetry. Guess what? We've let you down, right? And we've had nearly 600, no offense. Well, I'm going to have to talk to you afterwards, actually. We were trying. We've had nearly 600 chances to find one of us that was artistic enough to convey this feeling of we all live on spaceship Earth together. So I say you should give up on us. Stop waiting for us to find an artist that can convey this feeling to you. My solution now is we're just going to have to fly you all. You're just going to have to go up and experience it. You're just going to have to experience it for yourself. But so the one ask, until we get that done, is take a look at the best of our artistic community, and Nicole's in there. She's trying to convey a feeling to you. And I think it's a really important feeling for all of us to understand for going forward to the future. Great. Yeah, another slide. Look at you. He's like, you're right, buddy. There might even be another one. Is there another one? He was telling me that he was telling me I don't do a good job conveying my feelings. Seriously. And so, as Tony said, and as what Nicole's been trying to communicate to the public, my job was to install the Columbus laboratory to the International Space Station. And I thought that that would be my aha moment, that thing that primary mission objective, all of those things. And when I was in Houston, I got the assignment, I kind of had a similar situation like you. All the German flight controllers, a lot of them were in Houston. And they said, you're going to install our baby. We've been waiting 10 years. And I'm walking out of the room. And one guy blocks me and he says, Mr. Melibin, we've been waiting 10 years. Don't screw it up. And I'm like, OK, no pressure. I'm installing this thing. And it's like, don't screw it up. But we get it installed. And we float over to the Russian segment. We have this incredible meal with African-American, Asian-American, French-German, Russian, the first female commander of the space station going around the planet every 90 minutes, 17,500 miles per hour breaking bread with people we used to fight against. And this was that moment when I had that orbital shift, that perspective change that changed me forever. And I think if we can convey this with people through our storytelling, through VR, through other ways, because there are only going to be so many people to get a chance to fly in space. I mean, everyone in this room is going. But the other people will have to get something for them. And this one picture kind of says it all about us being one civilization, one humanity working together. And if Yuri flips the wrong switch, if Dan flips the wrong switch, if I flip the wrong switch, we're all gone. And this is playing with your food in space. I'm going to skip over this. We only have nine more minutes left. OK. But that's the one. That's little Melvin. But little Melvin. And really, for us as a community, we have to make sure that that next generation of explorers has what they need to take our places. And I was at a conference in DC, how to prepare students for jobs we can't yet imagine, how to ensure all students can be to the level of rigor, and how to build learning experiences to spark passion. And that's part of that perspective shift that we get bringing it back down to our home planet. So that's extremely important. And when we think about equality and justice, the kids on the left have the same thing. One can't see the game. Justice is when you get what you need to be successful to ensure that all of you in this room, the kids, the people you reach out to have what they need to see the game. Talk about the LEGO sets in Catherine and Margaret. Yeah, so many of you know, have seen the movie Hidden Figures. This is Catherine Johnson. We worked together at NASA Langley Research Center. And she inspired me in so many ways. And I remember when I gave her a copy of my book, the first thing she asked me at 100 years old, she said, Leland, when are we going to Mars? This is book thing. When are we getting to Mars? And she wanted to know more about the future. This is a woman that designed the trajectories for Apollo, the Gemini Mercury and the Shuttle. Yeah, and was one of the most humble, selfless people that did not want the fame or the fortune. And she was just in Hidden Figures. She just rocked the house. She's the star of the movie Hidden Figures. Yeah, so anyway. This picture is the 50th anniversary of human space flight, which was 50 years after Yuri Gagarin launched from Baikonur from a launch pad there, the very same launch pad that I launched from and that Nikolai will likely launch from. And the shirts that we're wearing, celebrating Yuri's night, as it's called. This really meant a lot to us, and we're holding a picture of Yuri Gagarin. So our crew was onboard the station on April 12, 2011, 50 years later. And so it's really wonderful to be here celebrating the 50th anniversary of Apollo. And I think that individual people make these kinds of differences. There's a lot that that shirt says. It's a picture of Yuri Gagarin. The fact that it's on the space station, with one up there for all of us, is actually thanks to Loretta Whitesides, who is here talking for Virgin Galactic earlier. And I think she's part of the force behind, and in fact, I would say the giant mover and shaker behind the fact that Yuri's night, a night, April 12, that around the planet, in hundreds of cities around the planet, we celebrate the fact that Yuri Gagarin launched into space. And one person and her friends started that. And she's here with us. And so each of us has that kind of power inside of us. And I think that's what Ariel's intent is, and in having, or the Media Lab's intent, in having us all get together, is for us to discover what other people are doing, but realize that each of us has some missions inside of us, and we should believe in those and carry them out. And so with that, this is the last picture, and we'll just take questions. This is our friend, all of our friend, Tracy Caldwell. It's a self-portrait. To me, it's the epitome of a woman who's a person and their relationship with our planet. And she may look like she's in space, but really, I mean, space is a place that belongs to all of us. We just hadn't been there yet. And so it's there for all of us. So with that, I would love to take questions. So thank you. That was a wonderful panel. Thinking about Mars, you were up there, and Nicole, you said that they had to grab your fingers away from leaving space, but a thousand days, that changes the paradigm completely. So if you can just talk a little bit about how you would prepare for a mission like that. You know, I think the preparation will be a lot like we already do. Because most of it comes down, I think, to the teaming aspect of how you work together in interesting environments and challenging situations and that kind of thing. I think the biggest difference is going to be that there is going to be a point as you're traveling and however many months that is, getting off this planet into Mars, where Earth is not out the window anymore. And I think that's gonna be, I don't know, maybe not psychological, I don't think we can't overcome it, but I think it's gonna be a very big difference to how we've lived and worked in space so far, because there is a connection that you maintain. I mean, even if you're only 240 miles off the planet, that's the farthest I've ever been, and ever will likely be off the planet. And honestly, because you have that below you, you feel more connected to it, I think, than you sometimes do right down in the middle of it. And I think it's kind of a, I don't know, it's a stability thing, it's a... When we were in Antarctica, I got to spend some training time there, and you could find the next person with a question while I'm finishing a real quick answer here, is that we were so fought, we were 200 miles from the South Pole, and there was literally nothing on the horizon. I mean, you just looked and there weren't mountains, it just was flat, there just wasn't horizon. And then we got to a point where we were, where we actually saw some mountains in the distance, and it was kind of like Camelot to me, like, there's a place, there's something there. And it was interesting to me that it made me feel so much better. And maybe we should turn to people who can't physically see for this kind of like, how do they sustain themselves with this power of perspective? So we'll have to search further for those answers. Someone else for the question? And I would just add Holodeck. Oh, yes, I would add that too. Question back there, whoever's, go ahead. Thank you for the wonderful talk. So my question is for the astronauts, what's the strangest thing about the cosmonauts? And for you, Nicola, what's the strangest thing about the astronauts? Oh, the way we look, right? So the main difference just in name, because we've been flying together for many years for decades, and we do the same job altogether on the station during our preparation. And we are just one family, with different people from different countries, from United States, from Russia, from Europe. And we are the same. I think one of the key points in this, you cannot see borders on Earth from space. And this fact changes everything in your mind when you think about it. So we are all passengers of the one huge spacecraft, and it's only one we have. And so we do it because we are dreamers, we are professionals, and we are family. So we are different, but we are all together and we do the same job. Okay. And it was interesting for me, I did some cold weather training with a small group and Dima was one of them. I never flew in space with Dima, but one of y'all did, because I saw his picture earlier. And we came back and we were being quizzed about our training by the psychologist. And Dima was a Russian MiG-29 pilot, and I was a US Navy F-18 pilot, right? So the psychologist was asking, hey, how was your relationship with Dima? And it turns out I never really studied cultural hierarchy, but it was different than at least what the psychologist assumed. And probably if I would have assumed something, it would have been different than I would have guessed. But Dima and I see the world exactly the same, right? It's the fighter pilot culture ended up transcending. And then the biggest differences was how fighter pilots and scientists see the world, right, in this training exercise we had to go do. And so I was like, yes. Don't assume that whatever cultural hierarchy you might imagine is in place, that different cultures will transcend that in some big and some, I'd say small, but powerful. Awesome. Any last comments with a minute left, or do you want to take a question? To the question. Question, one more question? I have a question. Thank you for your insights and recognizing that we're all on Spaceship Earth. My question is, how long can we keep the space station flying and what can we all do to make that happen? I tend, like any field when you read the news, if it's a field you really know, you kind of go, it's not exactly like that. And I feel that way when people use the words 2024 for the end of the space station, in that that thing can run for a really long time and it's an important experiment place to try out things for going further, whether it's the moon or Mars. And I just believe in using everything that's useful. And at the same time, they'll come a natural point where the space station is sort of sucking resources in people who are comfortable working on that mission and it keeps NASA and everyone else who's making, paving the way to space, which is many of us now. It keeps them from really being able to focus on bigger things and take bigger steps. So I don't get attached to numbers, I get attached to capabilities. Does anybody else want to jump in? That's a great answer. Ariel, are we done? One more question, yay. Right in the middle, you can just yell or you can throw that thing. We have been really shy with the microphone. You can like toss that thing. In space, where do you go for like a little long time just to be on yourself? Well, you know, I mean, the space station is pretty ginormous. I mean, Katie described it, 10 of these school bus size modules and even during the day with six crew members you could go your separate ways and not see each other all day if you didn't want to. We each have our own private crew compartment, you know, size of a phone booth kind of thing so you could go in there if you wanted to, but I don't know, I never really felt like I had to do that. I felt like you could get around enough throughout the day that you didn't feel like at some point it's like, oh my gosh, I gotta get away from these people. I never felt that. I mean, I think more I felt like, wow, why aren't they at the window looking out at the same thing that I am right now, you know, and just experiencing it all together. You wish to have them together. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, we had opportunity to speak to our families and you could do that, you know, at one end of the station on a computer and be completely comfortable that you were having a private conversation at least, you know, within the space station, how they were monitoring on the ground, I can't guarantee, but, you know, but there were, you know, you had, it was just such a beautiful space to be in. And, I don't know, I used to joke cause people would, we used to get this, what was it, like $2 a day or something? With some, like per diem thing. And I'm like, like incidentals or something, there was no hazard pay or anything like that, but you got like this little thing, you got like 50 bucks when you got back or something. And I was like, what is that? Like, you know, the money, I'm gonna go spend that in the European module, like vacation in Europe or Japan or something. I think that was box. I think a certain amount of, and you always had as much privacy as you ever wanted. I mean, there really was, you had your cabin, you had, there's lots of places. I think that the ability to be a little bit alone in a sort of being able to have a conversation, we have an IP phone, we can call the ground, it's as private as any cell phone conversation is, which are not, right? But I mean, I figure if anybody really needs to listen to me, you know, chatting with my husband, my family, we got to, I think we talked every day, but three. But the ability to have a conversation not within your shot of each other was important to me. I think there's just different ways you can isolate yourself. Even on the shuttle, you know, you need your time, your sort of space. And we used to create that maybe with a headset and listening to your own music. It puts you in your own kind of world. So there's different ways of achieving that. And you get a lot of practice during training. We had something called the glass bottom boat time where you go back on the shuttle and you would sit on top of the overhead windows. And as you looked down to the planet, it was like you're in a glass bottom boat, looking down at the Everglades or something, like, oh, glass bottom boat. Because you can sit on your ceiling. You can sit anywhere. Very convenient. Very neat. Mine was, so I only flew on the space shuttle. We went to the space station both times. And so you don't have really any alone space on the space shuttle. It's too small, though. A couple of times I was the only person on the space shuttle while the rest of the crew was on the space station. So that was kind of cool. I felt like I had my own spaceship. They trusted you, too. Well, he had the keys. On my first mission, I had one of those afternoons where you needed just a little bit of a alone time. I was just going really hard and working hard and thinking and just starting to get that bad headache coming on, feeling and went, OK, I've got to get somewhere quiet and close my eyes for just a couple of minutes and I can reset and I'll be fine. I didn't think to tell everybody that that was the case. I just went off and found it. It turns out on the shuttle missions, you pack the shuttle full and you're going to do a lot of cargo transfer, take as much stuff up to the space station crews as you possibly can. So we got these really large storage bags. And I think we had them on the deck too high and on the ceiling three high. So there's the whole giant rectangle bags boxes. And so when we got docked, we moved them all to the Columbus module, luckily, since Leland got it installed. Thank you. And so we had just bungied them to the deck there. And we were working through the transfer process, taking stuff out, making sure it got exactly put in place and then bringing trash or other important equipment back and packing it up. And so they just lived there for a few days. So just happened to be going by there. They were big rectangle boxes or bags and they were all bungied. So I had my hooded sweatshirt, which is mostly where I go to hide, and slid under the bungee cord in between these big bags and closed my eyes. And I don't think I was there very long. And John Phillips, one of my shuttle crewmates was responsible for all this cargo transfer. So he was going back and forth to these big bags and had the checklist and floats up upon me, and bungied with my eyes closed. And I don't know what he thought he found, but he screamed. And I looked up at somebody screaming at me when I was just trying to close my eyes and get some quiet time. He scared me, so I screamed at him. Ah! And then the rest of the crew heard two of us screaming and didn't know what was coming on. So you can find alone time, but I recommend you let people know what you're doing. All right. So with that, so having heard that great story that none of us had ever heard before, I want to thank everybody for being great panelists. And it was really wonderful to be here, and we're looking forward to seeing everybody in space together. Thank you. Tony promised.