OPHIRA EISENBERG, HOST:
It's time for a segment we call Meet The Experts. We are very close to Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. And today, we are joined by two awesome women who work at NASA. Let's meet Gioia Massa and Melissa Jones.
(APPLAUSE)
EISENBERG: People are excited. I'm excited. Gioia, what do you do at NASA?
GIOIA MASSA: I grow lettuce.
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: That's the full title.
MASSA: So I'm a project scientist. And I've been focusing on the veggie hardware, which is a plant growth chamber that we have on the International Space Station. I get to plant the seeds that the astronauts then get to grow up on the ISS.
EISENBERG: How difficult is it to grow lettuce or anything in zero gravity?
MASSA: Well, the most challenging thing is getting the environment right.
EISENBERG: Yeah.
MASSA: And especially getting the watering right. We've had a few issues with the watering.
EISENBERG: Because it just floats away?
MASSA: Well, or it sticks. And plant roots, they need both water and oxygen. And so getting a ball of water, you know, and getting air inside that ball of water is a challenge.
EISENBERG: So what do you do?
MASSA: We use kind of a Kitty Litter-like media.
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: OK.
MASSA: It's the same stuff that they use on athletic fields. And it's a porous ceramic clay. And it helps to trap some air in with the water.
EISENBERG: Tell me about this space lettuce. You know I really like the idea of space lettuce.
MASSA: (Laughter) Well, we were delighted. So we got to send three sets of what we call plant pillows - these are little sort of space-grow bags - with seeds planted in the them. And two of the sets had red romaine lettuce called Outredgeous. And this variety was the first that was grown in the veggie chamber. We couldn't let the astronauts eat the very first batch because we had to bring it back and make sure it was safe.
EISENBERG: What could've happened to it?
MASSA: Well, it's a new environment, you know. And so everything we sent up was very clean. But the astronauts, you know, have a lot of bacteria associated with them. And if those decided that they really liked my lettuce, it could have been a problem.
EISENBERG: Become - so the lettuce could have become an alien?
(LAUGHTER)
MASSA: Possibly.
EISENBERG: Possibly. OK, got it. All right, so the first one, you were, like, we're just going to test this. Fine. And then the second one?
MASSA: And then we got the data back. And everything looked OK. So then the crew were allowed to grow a second set and eat it. And then the third set were zinnias. And they just were grown a couple months ago. Scott Kelly harvested them on Valentine's Day and did the first on-orbit flower arrangement.
EISENBERG: Wow, that's so cool.
(APPLAUSE)
EISENBERG: So if you had to do a cost breakdown of what the cost is...
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: ...Of one leaf of lettuce, roughly what is it?
MASSA: Well, it's - you know, it's a little expensive to grow things in space. But, you know, eventually, when we want to go to Mars...
EISENBERG: Yeah.
MASSA: ...It'll be cheaper to grow our food there than to bring all our food with us. So we're trying to work towards that. And considering it's a lot harder to shop for lettuce up there than it is here...
EISENBERG: Yeah.
MASSA: ...It's worth it.
EISENBERG: There's no Whole Foods on the way?
MASSA: Nope.
EISENBERG: Because that lettuce is very expensive, just so you know.
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: All right, Melissa Jones, tell us about your work at NASA.
MELISSA JONES: So I'm the landing and recovery director for the agency. And basically what that means is any time the astronauts come back to Earth on the Orion capsule, whether it's through emergency landing or planned landing, I have a team of folks, and we all go get them.
EISENBERG: So what is the ideal recovery after an astronaut lands?
JONES: We call that nominal landing in the planned location. And it's right off the coast of San Diego in a zone called FLETA HOT. And we use the Navy to go get them.
EISENBERG: And when you say go get them, just paint the picture for me. They're hanging out in the spacecraft...
JONES: Yes.
EISENBERG: ...And the Navy, like - bing-bong, Navy here.
(LAUGHTER)
JONES: A little different than that.
EISENBERG: OK.
JONES: We're on a Navy well deck ship...
EISENBERG: Yeah.
JONES: ...which basically has the big well underneath the flight deck.
EISENBERG: OK.
JONES: And so we have to go out early, obviously. There's about 26 pieces of debris that come off of the capsule as it's coming down - parachutes and pyro canisters that all, you know, fall and deploy in different places. So we have software that tracks that so that we stay out of the debris zone. And as it comes down, we get a little bit closer and closer and closer. We call them waypoints.
EISENBERG: OK.
JONES: And we get cleared to go closer and closer. And so then it splashes down, and the three parachutes fall in the water. And then we send Navy divers out to make contact and put - we call them tow cleats - they're basically long ropes that have an attachment on the end of them that allow us to pull the capsule in, using a winch, into the well deck.
EISENBERG: Cool.
JONES: It is cool.
EISENBERG: I like all of those words.
(APPLAUSE)
EISENBERG: They were all, like, fun, interesting. OK, so when is your first mission recovery going to be?
JONES: So we'll do the first one in 2018.
EISENBERG: Yeah.
JONES: And that'll be no people because we don't put people on things until we're confident that it's OK to put people on things. We're trying to be responsible.
EISENBERG: Thanks.
(LAUGHTER)
JONES: Yeah. Trust me, the flight crew is happy about that, too. And then the first crewed launch is called EM-2, Exploration Mission 2. And that's in 2021, currently.
EISENBERG: Whoa.
JONES: Yes.
EISENBERG: That's, like, tomorrow.
(APPLAUSE)
EISENBERG: So as you know, in space, no one can hear you complain about scientific inaccuracies in movies.
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: So in this game, Jonathan Coulton and I will describe scientifically questionable plot points from famous sci-fi movies. And your job is to buzz in and just identify the movie. And after each question, we will discuss how plausible the movie really is. And the winner will get an ASK ME ANOTHER Rubik's Cube. I know.
JONES: Awesome.
EISENBERG: All right. So here we go. The Earth is about to be destroyed by a gigantic asteroid. But don't worry. We have a plan. NASA is going to train a group of drillers to land on the asteroid and blow it up with a nuclear weapon. Then we queue Aerosmith for a theme song.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
EISENBERG: Gioia.
MASSA: "Armageddon"?
EISENBERG: "Armageddon" is correct. Yes.
(APPLAUSE)
EISENBERG: Would NASA train drillers to go up in space? Is that plausible at all?
JONES: So many fallacies in that movie.
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: Melissa, you could barely watch that movie, I take it.
JONES: I actually really had a crush on Ben Affleck when I was in high school, which is when that movie came out.
EISENBERG: Yeah.
JONES: So it was easy to watch. But now it's very difficult to watch.
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: Right. It was easy to watch when you just were, like, he's beautiful.
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: So what's the major problem you have? Is it how they deal with the asteroid?
JONES: Training is about two years for astronauts.
EISENBERG: Yeah.
JONES: So pulling people off the middle of a oil rig and giving them two weeks of training and then slapping them and saying go up and get on a shuttle is not realistic. There was also this one scene that NASA likes to point out employees where they got up in one elevator and they got out and they went to two separate launch pads. I don't know if anybody else ever caught that, but that's not possible.
EISENBERG: That's a no-no.
(LAUGHTER)
JONES: Completely inaccurate. Not even physically possible.
EISENBERG: Yeah, because there is usually, what, nine are 12 different ways they can go?
JONES: Well, I mean, you can't launch one shuttle that close to the other one.
EISENBERG: Yeah, that's ridiculous
JONES: You would never do that.
EISENBERG: Why would you do that?
JONES: The launch pads aren't even set up that way.
(LAUGHTER)
JONATHAN COULTON: OK. An astronaut is stranded on Mars. To survive, he needs to grow his own food using human waste as fertilizer.
(LAUGHTER)
COULTON: It's not lettuce that he chooses. No, it's not lettuce. What does he grow? What does he live off of? Potatoes. Here's hoping he's not on the Atkins diet.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
COULTON: Melissa.
JONES: "The Martian"?
COULTON: It is "The Martian."
(APPLAUSE)
EISENBERG: Gioia, what's the possibility of growing potatoes on Mars?
MASSA: Well, potatoes are actually a pretty good crop for, kind of, a higher calorie production, you know, system. But probably wouldn't do it in a habitat.
EISENBERG: In a habitat? Interesting.
MASSA: Well, there's just not enough light. The light in a room is very, very dim compared to what you would need to grow plants and, you know, enough to survive.
EISENBERG: And then, can you survive just on potatoes?
MASSA: Well, it's not a good diet.
(LAUGHTER)
MASSA: You know, I don't think we, you know, we really know the long-term effects of that. But there'd probably be some serious nutritional deficiencies over time.
EISENBERG: I think we do know the long-term effects of that, sort of - not in space, per se. All right, how about this mission recovery? An astronaut survives a spacewalk gone wrong and manages, by herself, to make her way back to Earth. She lands a space capsule in a lake, evacuates by herself and then swims to shore.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
EISENBERG: Melissa.
JONES: "Gravity"?
EISENBERG: Yes.
(APPLAUSE)
EISENBERG: So Sandra Bullock couldn't have done that?
JONES: So you know how we talked about "Armageddon"?
(LAUGHTER)
JONES: "Gravity" was worse than "Armageddon."
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: Yeah?
JONES: Yeah.
COULTON: Wow.
JONES: Oh, yeah.
EISENBERG: What about, like, just the crazy stuff that's going on when she's hanging off the...
JONES: No.
EISENBERG: No?
JONES: No.
EISENBERG: And the stuff and the space garbage...
JONES: You'd never do a spacewalk untethered. You never have tools untethered. Hubble's not even the same orbit as the ISS.
EISENBERG: Oh, my gosh.
COULTON: Oh, boy.
(LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE)
JONES: That movie was so inaccurate that I never watched it until I knew I was coming on this show.
(LAUGHTER)
JONES: So, like, that's...
COULTON: Wow, you boycotted it.
JONES: Well, no. NASA, I mean, a lot - if you talk to folks from Houston who are in mission operations, they're like no.
EISENBERG: They're mad?
JONES: That wasn't just - after their opinions, I was like, OK. Well, I'm not going to waste my money, so...
(LAUGHTER)
COULTON: Aliens may have blown up the White House, but Jeff Goldblum has a plan to strike back.
(LAUGHTER)
COULTON: He manages to engineer a computer virus that will bring down the alien's shields - sounds plausible. Not only that, but he's able to send the virus to the mothership using a Macintosh PowerBook.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
COULTON: Melissa.
JONES: "Independence Day?"
COULTON: That's right.
(APPLAUSE)
EISENBERG: So either of you, what are the odds that aliens are using compatible computer technology to us?
MASSA: Pretty slim.
EISENBERG: Yeah, you think so, Gioia?
MASSA: Yeah.
EISENBERG: Yeah, they don't have the same power cords?
MASSA: I mean, it's probably definitely a different version of the operating system.
EISENBERG: But the question is, is it our last version? Or is it a future version?
MASSA: That's a good question.
EISENBERG: Yeah, because they might be like - guess what? - Windows 2000 was the best Windows.
(LAUGHTER)
COULTON: This is your last clue. Why spend billions on equipment to communicate with astronauts? - because, a little gray alien was apparently able to phone home using just a speak and spell toy, an umbrella lined with aluminum foil and a coffee can. So why are you wasting all this money?
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
COULTON: Gioia.
MASSA: "E.T."
COULTON: "E.T." is correct.
(APPLAUSE)
EISENBERG: What do you think - extraterrestrial life? How close are we to communicating with something intelligent?
MASSA: I mean, there is a lot of galaxies out there. So it's always possible. But, you know, they have to kind of want to talk to us, too. I'm not sure that's going to happen anytime soon.
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: I like that. They think they're too good for us right now. Is that the problem?
JONES: They're going to have to come to us. We can't get to them yet.
EISENBERG: I think it's very interesting that neither of them are, like, yeah, aliens are real.
COULTON: They're actual scientists is the thing.
EISENBERG: I know, that's...
(LAUGHTER)
EISENBERG: All right. Puzzle guru Art Chung, how did our esteemed guests do?
ART CHUNG: Melissa won that round. But because you're both are so amazing, we're going to give both of you a Rubik's Cube. Congratulations and thank you so much, our experts Gioia Massa and Melissa Jones.
(SOUNDBITE OF ACDC SONG, "DIRTY DEEDS DONE DIRT CHEAP")
EISENBERG: If your trivia knowledge goes to infinity and beyond, you should be a contest-ranaut (ph) on our show. How do you achieve liftoff? Simply make contact with Mission Control by going to amatickets.org. Coming up, we'll meet Mike Rowe whose show "Dirty Jobs" had him working with men and women who regularly overcame fear, danger and stench to accomplish their daily tasks, all which has really prepared him to be on our show. I'm Ophira Eisenberg, and you're listening to ASK ME ANOTHER from NPR.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DIRTY DEEDS DONE DIRT CHEAP")
ACDC: (Singing) Dirty deeds done dirt cheap...
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