November 6, 2017 9:50 pm

Explore the Future of Human Spaceflight with Mike Massimino, Alan Stern and more

The future looks bright for space travel. Although the shuttle program has long been discontinued, private space companies and government agencies are continuing to produce bleeding-edge technology and interest in off-Earth travel is hot.

This week on StarTalk All-Stars we’re discussing where all this innovation and interest will lead us with our host, former astronaut Mike Massimino, comic co-host Maeve Higgins, principal investigator on the New Horizons mission and chairman of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation Alan Stern, Grammy award winning composer Eric Whitacre, and Sandy Magnus, former ISS and STS astronaut.

We recorded this episode at The Explorers Club in NYC, as part of their annual Space Stories program (co-chaired by Stacey Severn, StarTalk’s very own Community Manager.) The subject was the future of human space travel, but a few of the subjects really stood out for me. First, I loved listening to Sandy describe her time spent on the International Space Station and her STS missions: what music she listened to on the ISS, how she felt “disconnected” from Earth, and what it was like being a crew member of the last shuttle mission, STS-135.

Secondly, it was fascinating to listen to Eric delve into the creative process behind his “Deep Field” project, his orchestral composition inspired by Hubble Telescope images. This led to a discussion we’ve raised before on StarTalk – what the value would be of sending artists into orbit to capture the “mood” of what it’s like to be in space.

Our panel also explored the working relationship between private space companies and the government, the greatest challenges of commercial spaceflight, and why Mars may be our next destination but human space travel is, itself, a “cascading series of leaps.”

The science of spaceflight is interesting enough on its own, but hearing Eric’s inspiration from seeing the Hubble Telescope images, and listening to Sandy and Mike talk about the overwhelming emotions of seeing the Earth from above, reminds me that although space travel is first and foremost scientific and exploratory, those elements are intertwined with the emotional weight and experience that comes with traveling outside of our home world – and what an experience it is.

Make sure to tune in!

Please join us tomorrow night for StarTalk All-Stars new episode, The Future of Human Spaceflight, with Mike Massimino, at 7pm ET right here on our website, as well as on our All-Stars channels on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and TuneIn. If you’re an All-Access subscriber, you can watch or listen to this episode ad-free at 7pm, too. And remember that you can also catch next week’s StarTalk All-Stars episode one week early on TuneIn, at tunein.com/startalkallstars.

That’s it for now. Keep Looking Up!
–Ian Mullen