Curiosity Theory
A podcast about sharpening your curiosity through science, stories, and bold questions. With Astrophysicist Dr. Dakotah Tyler & STEM Educator Justin Shaifer.
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Curiosity Theory
The Rocket Engines That Don't Burn Fuel | Dr. Naia Butler-Craig
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In this episode of Curiosity Theory, hosts Dr. Dakotah Tyler and Justin Shaifer sit down with Dr. Naia Butler-Craig, a newly minted aerospace engineer and NASA electric propulsion researcher, for a conversation about rocket science, how we actually move through space, and where humans are headed next.
The discussion moves from her path through grad school and into NASA to how electric propulsion works and why it beats chemical rockets on efficiency, what it would really take to get people to the Moon and Mars, and what living and working at the agency is like from the inside. Along the way, she breaks down what is happening inside a Krypton Hall effect thruster and why plasma, not combustion, is the future of deep space travel.
The conversation also dives into why astrology is not astronomy, how to think about trust and misinformation in science, the engineering and people behind the missions we take for granted, and the surprising ways space tech is advancing medicine on Earth through Avatar tissue chips. It closes on the sci-fi and the curious childhood that set her on this path in the first place.
Chapters
00:00:00 Intro and meeting Dr. Naia Butler-Craig
00:01:15 Her path into NASA and life inside the agency
00:11:43 Electric propulsion vs chemical rockets explained
00:17:23 Getting humans to the Moon and Mars
00:24:04 Why astrology is not astronomy
00:31:50 Trust, misinformation, and relying on science
00:37:00 Is NASA still competent? The engineering behind spaceflight
00:46:01 Avatar chips: how space tech advances medicine
00:58:50 How sci-fi and a curious childhood shaped her
01:03:34 Inside a Krypton Hall effect thruster
01:11:37 Where to find Naia and final thoughts
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What's up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of Curiosity Theory. It's your co-host, Justin, Mr. Fascinate Schaefer, a STEM media producer and curious king. I'm going by today. Uh, joined here with my co-host, Dr.
SPEAKER_05Dakota Tyler, aka Dr. Starkid, astrophysicist and lord of curiosity, uh, regent of curiosity, if you will. Um, this quadrant of the galaxy, at least. And we have a very interesting conversation that we dug into with a very special guest today. We talked about um electric propulsion, different propulsion systems getting around in space, the future of humans on the moon, perhaps on Mars, a little bit about the uh process of getting a PhD in something like rocket science. And with us, we have a rocket scientist, newly appointed doctorate of aerospace engineering, Dr. Naya Butler Craig. Thanks for being on.
SPEAKER_02Thank you so much for having me. I am so honored to be here with the king and regent of curiosity.
SPEAKER_01I love that.
SPEAKER_02No, I love that. Um really happy to be here and to talk about you know my journey through through school and you know, NASA, where NASA's heading, where I hope to head within NASA and all things face.
SPEAKER_06Well, and I we appreciate you leaning into that with us, and everybody stay on the edge of your seats because we're about to strap in and launch right now.
SPEAKER_05So, Cleveland, NASA, civil servant path. Wait, are you a civil servant already?
SPEAKER_02No, no. Um, I actually got the notification they will I'll be converted effective June 14th. So very soon. Yeah, very excited.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. What's your what are your long-term, if you've thought about them yet, like your long-term goals at NASA?
SPEAKER_02That's a great question. I recently had a conversation with a mentor about that because I think, and you can probably relate, like when you're in the trenches of grad school, you're just trying to get out. And I feel like I just completely forgot about that. All I knew is I wanted to be an astronaut. I didn't really know like what my career would look like. But what I found is that um going the systems route, which is what I've done, kind of instead of going back into kind of technical research, systems route gives me a little bit more flexibility with my career trajectory. And so I would love to err on the side of like technical leadership. So like maintaining, you know, systems thinking and um perspective and kind of staying, I guess, zoomed out at the mission level, but also retaining that tech, that technical capability and aptitude and just kind of finding a really good balance between that. And, you know, in order to move up, you have to, you have to get some kind of managerial experience and at least at some point in your career. So I imagine that that's gonna be part of it. But ultimately, of course, you know, I want to be an astronaut. And so um I've been studying their career trajectories, which tend to pivot a lot too. So I'm remaining flexible, but also just keeping in mind that like I have these um, you know, two big things that I want to stay on the system side and look at the mission level instead of, you know, I love the technology, but I I want to see how the technology can actually be applied for missions and then um also retaining that technical capability so that I can still be competitive for the astronaut core. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. So what would you say to somebody who is also wanting is wanting to like work for NASA one day in some capacity? What do you what do you think is like a good uh preparatory route or way to start thinking?
SPEAKER_02That's a great question. I feel like NASA is so there's genuinely a place for everybody. Like even my mentor that I, she's a new mentor that I just met. Um, she was a singer. She started in IT, but now she's like a branch chief at NASA or a division chief, actually, which is a step up from branch. NASA has like this interesting hierarchical structure, but she she made it pretty high up in that hierarchical structure on the business side and management. And her her background started in IT. And so I think that one of the big things is just kind of staying open to like, you know, inflexible to not mission pivots, but career pivots is really big. And um, you know, just kind of throwing your hat in, even if you don't always feel qualified, is kind of something that I always is a philosophy I always had because I got my foot in the door with systems, but then that ended up, that job ended up opening doors up for me in electric propulsion because of, you know, Glenn has that core competency there. And that's how I decided to get into grad school for that specific thing. And now I'm here. So I feel like it's just you want to stay flexible, try everything, even if it doesn't um seem quite aligned with exactly what you want. Just throw your hat in the ring. And then preparatory-wise, just make sure you keep an eye on USA jobs because they post a lot of pathways um internships there. And those are typically like direct routes into civil service. And that's what I've done. Um, I've been a pathway student since 2016. So uh the fact that, like, you know, they've I've been allowed to, you know, matriculate through school while, you know, staying in that program and basically having this spot for me in the in the federal government waiting for me to graduate has been super, super, super convenient. And I've been very grateful for that. So and you can do pathways, I think as young as 16. Like you can start pretty early.
SPEAKER_05And so that would be like a high school internship or something like that?
SPEAKER_02Pretty much, yeah. Pathways is like a co-op program. So you are you end up swearing in as a federal civil servant. So like I I did my whole like oath of office and all that when I was like 18. Or yeah, I was eight, I had just turned 18. Um, but then you would you would kind of stay there or go to the center on a rotational type basis. So you would choose like a semester you wanted to work um for you know however long, and then you'd go on leave without pay, LWAP, while you do school. And you can most programs or most offices or departments, branches, whatever, will allow you to do that, you know, while in grad school, but depending on you know their needs and their staffing idea for you, you know, they might want you a little earlier. So you just have to work that out with your with your boss, but it's definitely a very nice path for sure.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Do you think is there like less of those positions now? I know that NASA has been getting the their budget cut pretty routinely over the past handful of years.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Um, is that is that do you do you see that as like a less realistic career pathway moving forward or for like somebody right now, or is it just volatile and you know, if some uh some other administration takes over, you think maybe a lot of that stuff will come back?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's a great question. I feel like just still kind of finally being on site again at Glenn. And also Jared Isaacman, all his new directives, like he's he's really looking to restaff, I guess, a lot of the folks that we've lost, I guess, as of last year. Um, a lot of people took the DRPs, and so I forget what that stands for, but it's like you can leave essentially, you can retire um and you get a payout. And so um I see a lot of effort to just like restaff people, but in very specific places. And it's really aligned with the overall agency's goals. So, like, you know, that's gonna be the Artemis and Moon-based kind of initiative, and then space nuclear is huge right now. So they're looking for a lot of people in that. Um, and I'm seeing them wanting to staff people at all levels. So, like, you know, they want senior leadership, they want people from industry that are coming with industry expertise, and then they want to start. I I believe it looks like, you know, they they're still opening pathways, opportunities, but those tend to be very like you get hired and we want you to fill this role and we want you to stay here for a little bit. And so um that's kind of what that's kind of what I experience even going into systems, and so um short, short answer is I I think it's still a very viable path. And I definitely know for sure the new the next administrations hope hopefully will will see the value in that too. Um especially because yeah.
SPEAKER_05Why did I guess I'm confused? So they fired a whole bunch of people last year, and now they're trying to restaff those positions this year.
SPEAKER_02I don't understand the I wouldn't say fired. A lot of people took the DRPs, which were like an opportunity to leave.
SPEAKER_05Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_02Um, I if I could remember the acronym, I'll look it up for you if we need to.
SPEAKER_05Um what was like the purpose of that? That was like the Trump administration trying to just get rid of people by paying them out up front and then not having to pay their salaries or something.
SPEAKER_02I had actually I don't know. I don't know where that came from. It seemed a part of the big I got you, I got you.
SPEAKER_06So it's the deferred resignation program, and it was a government government-wide spending reduction and workforce streamlining effort. So I guess it allowed participating civil servants to resign but remain on paid administrative leave with full pay um until this agreed upon departure date. Um we're in a confusing time. We're in a confusing time.
SPEAKER_05Wait, so they are still getting paid though, but they're just not working.
SPEAKER_02It should be like one lump sum, I thought. Is that right, Jesse?
SPEAKER_06Administrative leave. Uh I can ask. See.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_06Uh, it's not exactly clear how all this like resignation and payout stuff works.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_06All right. Right? The NASA deferred resignation program. Um, they normally pay out on bi-weekly paydays while you're on administrative leave, and then they have a lump sump payment after you officially separate from the agency. Um, but I guess the idea is to phase you out of your employment, but then then they have a guaranteed cutoff where they're like, okay, we'll have that money available again that we're not spending on this person.
SPEAKER_02That makes sense.
SPEAKER_06Yes. Um, still, I don't know. It is all kind of disheartening, you know?
SPEAKER_02It definitely was. And I know like you talk about the impact of pathways. I know like a lot of pathway students, I don't know if this is related to DRPs, but just to the overall state of the federal government last year, a lot of them couldn't really convert in a timely fashion as a result. And so it ended up being a blessing in disguise that my defense kept getting delayed into 2026 because I think I would have had a much harder time if it were 2025. So I say that to say that it seemed to improve even just over that the course of a year. Um, and I know this year they've been very adamant about converting people sooner because the fact that my effective date is June 14th is kind of surprising. I was expecting like a 180-day grace period after my degree got conferred. And so that that wasn't the case. So hopefully things are looking up.
SPEAKER_05Um yeah, okay. So aerospace engineering, you uh were your research was experimenting, testing um an electric propulsion system that is different than the typical jet propulsion that we use, which is based off of using fuel, which is like in sp. I don't know if anybody, if you if you haven't really thought about it, it's kind of like in space there is no like atmosphere to push off of. So you kind of are like throwing material out of the back, and then you can push off of that with more stuff, which is a like a weird way to think about it, but that's what you have to do, and that's why you know you you end up having like you think about the Artemis 2 mission, there's this small Orion capsule that's like the size of a bus or something like that, and you and there's like skyscrapers worth of fuel tanks that you have to use because you need to like just be launching this stuff from behind you and then launching stuff off of it really quickly so that you can push off. It's kind of like a weird thing to think about.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, for sure. And that's so what you're referring to is chemical propulsion, right? Where you have fuel and oxidizer that come together, combustion happens, and the momentum from that combustion process is what's directed in one direction to go the opposite direction. But with chemical propulsion, that that combustion process generates a lot of thrust and momentum, whereas electric propulsion, we don't generate that much. And so electric propulsion is not using a fuel and oxidizer combination, you know, to have combustion. We essentially have a neutral gas particle that goes through basically a streaming ring of electrons. And so when that neutral hits electrons, it frees electric, it frees an electron, making it an ion, and then we excuse me, and then we use electric fields to accelerate that ion to very high speeds. And so when you compare the amount of thrust of like a chemical rocket that gets you off Earth and into space to an electric rocket, it's very, very, very, very, very different. So my favorite analogy is like the amount of thrust that electric rockets produce is like the amount of force it requires you to hold up a sheet of paper. So it's on the millinewton kind of scale, whereas um, you know, chemical rockets are like mega newtons. So millinewtons 10 to the minus six, mega is 10 to the plus six. And so very different scales of thrust, but electric rockets don't need huge fuel tanks to do what they need to do because they're much more efficient in that way. Um we classify efficiency in rocketry by um something called specific impulse. And so electric rockets have very high specific impulse because you can get a lot more thrust for how much propellant that you have relative to chemical. And so that's the kind of the main delineation between the two. And I always have to make sure people know like, okay, you can't use an electric rocket to get off the ground, but it's very useful unless you're trying to launch a piece of paper into space, unless you're trying to launch a piece of paper.
SPEAKER_06So then the right. So the I guess the the most common use case for an electric rocket would be something that's either already in space or on a celestial body with a very small atmosphere or like a low gravitational pull.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely, absolutely. And so, like there's even something called air-breathing electropulsion, which can happen kind of on the fringes of our atmosphere, so very, very low atmosphere. But I would say um the primary use case, or I'll say um application for electric rockets are in space propulsion for sure. But there's a lot of research going on to make them more suitable for kind of very low atmospheric environments, too. So we'll see how it matures, but it's definitely great for space and going far into space too.
SPEAKER_05Right. So this is sort of like a um a secondary propulsion system that keeps you from having to pack a whole bunch of chemical uh propellant that just makes the entire thing way more, anyways, which means that you need even more uh fuel to get off. So anytime that you can save that with anything else, whether it was so I'm sorry, is it it's not nuclear? Uh it's nuclear.
SPEAKER_00What is propelled?
SPEAKER_05You're the electrical propulsion system is not powered by nuclear, but it could be though, couldn't it? If you're using the nuclear to um generate electricity, exactly, yes.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, it depends. So you it could either be solar electric propulsion, nuclear electric propulsion. Yeah, those are the two kind of main ones, and so CEP is typically what we're used to. We just have solar panels that obviously generate the electricity, but now we are kind of airing on the side of nuclear, and that's what the current project I'm supporting is wants to do. Kind of a it's more of a tech demonstration, um, because we haven't done this since 1965, and so uh or launch a nuclear reactor to space since 1965. And so, um, yes, we intend to have a nuclear reactor on a large boom, and it's going to provide power to our electric rockets.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, very cool. So, what do you see as the like a realistic near to long-term future for humans in space? Um you know, I hear, I feel like we hear oftentimes uh, you know, that's guys like Elon Musk talk about colonies on Mars. To me, that seems totally unrealistic in any relevant timeline. Um, but I don't know, maybe I'm not, you know, I'm not an aerospace engineer. So, you know, I could I could be I could be wrong about that. Well what do you think about that, I guess, and then the you know, what is a realistic timeline and uh you know goals for us in space?
SPEAKER_02No, sure. I won't speak on behalf of the agency, but um, I mean, just based on kind of the major press conference, which was ignition, which happened March 24th, I think. Um, the agency made some very clear priorities of like where they want all their time and resources to go. And I think I said earlier that was moon base and um any not NEP specifically, just nuclear in space, so EP and also other things. Um, they also want like a nuclear surface fission power system as well.
SPEAKER_05So on the surface of the moon.
SPEAKER_02That is also something that they want to launch, or they would be doing what?
SPEAKER_05Like what is that, like what is that, what does that entail, or what would be the purpose?
SPEAKER_02Right. So nuclear power on the moon, essentially. Instead of relying on solar power, uh I guess all operations on Moonbase would be nuclear powered, I believe is the goal. And so um that would apply to multiple different interfaces, so rovers and um habitats for humans and in labs on the moon, which I believe Moonbase is um aiming to establish. But as far as human presence um in space, I think the moon is going to be where we want boots on the ground again. I don't know if like if I've heard much about like Mars, accrued Mars missions to the moon. Um, I believe all of the energy is gonna go to moon base, and then we're going to figure out better ways to get to Mars. And that's kind of where the NEP or nuclear electric propulsion comes into play. Um and nuclear electric propulsion has been as always, even when I first started in in the field, that was always kind of like a goal for the for the electric propulsion um, I'll say field, industry, group, whatever. It's a pretty niche uh technology. And so we always knew that, like, okay, a nuclear would be probably the best case just for powering these things. Um, because if you want to get to much higher power and you want to get further from the sun, you have to have an alternative power source. Um, so that's always kind of been on the horizon. So it kind of makes sense that the agency is moving that way. But as far as like crude missions, I believe that that's probably going to be primarily moon focused. And I know that the agency has you know publicly announced that they want a very high mission cadence of crude missions to the moon as soon as you know we get to like I think Artemis four andor five should be the focus for those missions. So we're hoping that it it could be happening pretty soon. Um, and then from there, all the uh subsequent Artemis missions, I believe, are gonna be populating that moon base. So that's what it looks like. And I believe they will there will be people there to do it or at least support it. Um, but we'll see. I I know for sure though that the Mars kind of crude missions I haven't really heard too much about, and I don't believe is going to be a priority until we get really good at sustaining our long-term presence on the moon again.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I think this is a fascinating development. Um, and I mean, I think there's so many questions that that kind of springs in the mind. Like I've heard about research being done on the lunar regolith uh to prevent, I think, uh solar radiation that's like not protected by you know our atmosphere from impacting us directly, and then lunar dust being a big problem to have to manage. Um, one of the things that we kind of talked about before, Naya, was uh this prospect of before there are manned missions on the lunar surface, um, because of the advances today that are happening in humanoid robotic systems, of them maybe becoming the first wave of settlers on the moon that are able to do things either piloted by folks you know locally on Earth or just purely autonomously, like whether that be digging uh in the lunar regolith or um, you know, helping to establish these colonies. And I know you said it kind of sent you down a rabbit hole, right?
SPEAKER_01A little bit.
SPEAKER_02For sure. Yeah. So yeah, I had no idea that Johnson was working or ever had a program for those humanoid robots, and that's essentially kind of what their mission application or use case was meant to be. I haven't heard many updates in the room of that, but. um and it was interesting that you pointed out like China's I guess progression with that because I know that you know part of the Artemis Accords is kind of spreading out the load across different countries and and their um their space agency goals because you know it there's no point in reinventing the wheel and the whole point of the Artemis Accords is to approach space exploration collaboratively. So it's very possible that you know NASA's maybe just said like hey you guys work on this we'll work on this um but yeah you open my mind to that I had no idea that was going on at Johnson but Johnson seems to be leading the way on all the kind of cutting edge tech.
SPEAKER_06So yeah um and so can you just help for the audience they may not understand these Artemis missions right uh I think you might have a pretty good sense of kind of the sequential order of the Artemis missions as outlined by NASA and like where this is all headed.
SPEAKER_02Yeah absolutely so we had Artemis one which was the demo or kind of checkout of the space launch system and the Orion capsule um and then re-entry I if I I don't know if you kind of heard it there was a lot about the reentry and the heat shield holding up um and they had to make some significant or well I don't know if they were significant actually I can't speak to that but they had to make some changes to um just make sure that when the crew kind of capsule came back that everything was good and then that was proven in Artemis II. And then Artemis III I believe is going to be a rendezvous or some type of um not demo but more of a practice run on how you get two different spaceships to dock and and rendezvous and talk to each other. And I believe that's gonna happen in Leo if I'm not mistaken. And then from there then then I think Artemis for Leo what's that thank you I've working at NASA I've definitely dripped um drank drunk the Kool-Aid on the acronym so please check me. Leo is low earth orbit.
SPEAKER_05Oh okay yes I believe that's gonna and and I'll make sure I check that too but um and then something say uh when'd you get so into uh astrology yeah I was gonna say is it is that the use of astrology like what's going on here whoa that is like a cuss word that is a little yeah you're right i i just did a quick google for you yeah Leo Artemis 3 is supposed to stay in low earth orbit but what did you mean what did you mean by it's a curse word oh yeah I mean how many Dakota I'm sure this is more your an original experience for you luckily when I tell people about aerospace engineering astrology never comes up but then they'll be like well I'm I've always been so interested in space and astrology and I'm like oh it's not me but I know Dakota being an astronomer I'm sure you've experienced that way more than I have yeah yeah we get those you know I get those questions a lot you know it's interesting because I recognize that astrology I think in a lot of ways is probably more mainstream in its um like dispersion across society um which is to say that I think that more people have an intro to space planets um the fact that these things move across the sky uh via astrology than actually astronomy so I think that it's a a a in a good point to be able to connect with people um because I mean that's uh it also I think I also make sense intuitively to be like oh well you know we're in this universe we're one of all these planets uh it's all connected gravitationally um a lot of people learn that tides are caused by the moon so you know it I think that it is a natural question to ask how this relates to us as as people and obviously you know as um as an astronomer and astrophysicist we can we can do things like calculate the gravitational pool that Jupiter has on each of us right now and we find out that it you know it's pretty much negligible and that there isn't you know if somebody asks the question well if Jupiter is closer by and there is a negligible difference like a tiny difference in the gravity that you feel from it than you know somebody who was born when it's on the other side of the solar system could that impact your your personality or something like that and as a scientist while I would say let's see let's run an experiment right and you can do that there's a number of things that you can try to do and um nobody has ever been able to I mean I mean if you did if you came up with an experiment that demonstrated different like a scientific significant um a statistically significant effect on humans based on where the planets were you would win a Nobel prize in in physics this would be like one of the most astounding uh you know provable things that that humans have ever have ever come to know but you know regardless I think that in in a very real way the night sky the universe has always been extremely impactful for humans um we have we're we all live in cities right now you know just is in Tulsa right now you're in cleveland I'm in LA you can't really see the the a a clear night sky there's city lights there's this light pollution so we kind of get detached from it and a lot of times the only people who are thinking about space are people who are like working for NASA you you make rockets like this is your thing I look through telescopes at things justin gets into like astrophotography so we think about space a lot but if you go back even just a couple thousand years I mean even just a few hundred years ago before there was electricity everybody is seeing a dark night sky above them every single night and it makes sense that you know our early human cultures are even built around these myths and stories that are directly connected to the sky to the point that people are like um passing on their their beliefs and their morals and their values in these stories that they create. So I think that we're sort of um we're we're like very intimately tied as a species to the universe and in the night sky even though today it doesn't seem to be a huge factor in well I mean for some people it is right like some people are making their decisions based on what like a horoscope says and I guess us all on this call also you know make life decisions based you know that are related to to space and what's going on. But that I mean that's something that deeply resonates with me. And um you know I try not to like you know get in dunk mode too heavy when when it comes up because most people I think do approach it from curiosity. There are some people who turn into like I think um like astrology Nazis with it where no I'm not talking to an Aries or like you know and I think that that's that's sort of abusing it in a in a in a bad way but when it comes to like just wanting to learn more I feel like that's a place that we can we can connect with folks on.
SPEAKER_00That's real.
SPEAKER_05And just for anyone that's listening and wants to hear a deeper dive that we did on this we actually have episode nine of Curiosity theory uh where we talked in depth about astrology and astronomy's divorce um because if it's not intuitive astrology actually was the foundation upon which the field of astronomy was built uh so uh before we could really understand these things we used these astrological projections to try to understand our universe yes I love that's a much more compassionate approach to it yeah yeah and a lot of sciences um do start out this way right like uh alchemy becomes the foundation for which chemistry pops out of which chemistry is you know this is like a demonstrated verified science all the but alchemy is not but you can see how they are so related right like an early alchemist may be like hmm you know if I mix the right things together can I make gold out of something else if I like apply heat and mix like that is a chemistry experiment and the answer is no you can't but you but you figure that out right through trying all these different things yeah there's an interesting story about I think Newton almost burning down his laboratory or something because he's doing all of these alchemy experiments. I think it's Newton it may be somebody else and um yeah it's like but Newton also came up with a bunch of uh stuff about planetary orbits that in um experiments with light and these are the things that we that we do believe I mean you know this as a uh as a rocket scientist Newton's equations you can use those and build a rocket and get to outer space like that's how right he was about that very much so it's a very fundamental equation for us the thirst equations based off of yeah Newton's right but nobody at NASA is um you know trying to mix in a lab and make gold right so it's like you take you take the things that are verified and right and tested and then you know the things that aren't those are those are just like mistakes that we made in the past and um not something that we want to spend too much time focusing on.
SPEAKER_02Right. Yeah that's a great redirect I think for sure like I I think I think we deal I know I do I'll meet somebody new and talk about my field and immediately there's a lot of distrust in scientists because I think we don't make enough room for the curiosity of people um and I mean I have family members that known that I worked in NASA for 10 years now and they're like you're hiding something from me you know we never landed on the moon Thanksgiving must be crazy. Oh my gosh it definitely can be and I'm getting these you know all these videos about how you know everything's wrong and I I think with with everything with any I'm not gonna call it misinformation because I think it's I think that just holds a much um it holds a very negative connotation. I think the better word for it is like it's just misplaced trust more so because like why do you trust this random blog as opposed to your your cousin or your niece that has you know been at NASA and that like I've never had any reason to lie to you blah blah blah. But there's still people that are trying to make meaning of something right make meaning of what they know. And I think that's kind of what you come into with astrology too is that it's just meaning making everybody wants to understand the world and they only have their environment in the context that they're given to do so. And so like you said it it's a great like starting point to introduce people to like you say verifiable evidence. It's not like completely it down it's like hey like no you're you're not right that you know they're lying and it was a movie. However you can prove it by doing this there are reflectors on the moon that if you were to point lasers at the moon and you you see it come back and that would probably tell you that you know there was some human presence there to place them. There's very there's a bunch of different things. So I think that's kind of my relation to I think the context of that conversation about just like you have your field and you have what you know and you have what is kind of canon in your field and then you have kind of the fringes of your field which can be more mainstream unfortunately but like you said it's an opportunity to kind of engage people because again people only know what they know.
SPEAKER_05So yeah yeah and you know a huge piece of that is what you know I think we all try to do as science communicators which is um try to try to help people guide the the critical aspects like what we're critiquing because it can't just be about oh we don't believe anything nothing's real like right like that's not a very you're you're not gonna get far down the path of building new knowledge if you're starting from zero every day. And so it's like really important I think to like help people understand you know what that verifiable process looks like. Like why do why is it that we actually do start from this ground based knowledge when it comes to building rockets when it comes to um actually like this example, you know, the space program a lot of people don't know that you know we have Artemis now but if you go back before that there's um you know there's Challenger there's Columbia there's the Apollo program there's the Mercury program before that. And there's like this long history of engineering mistakes that we made at various levels that caused a lot of people to lose their lives. And there's a lot of things that we learned through that right and it's like we've got this entire history of knowledge that's very important that we never forget because these are things that have been demonstrated and people's lives are literally on the line and now I think it's that that's one of the things I think is so impressive about us stringing together a successful Artemis II mission where you know what was the biggest thing that went wrong Excel broke up there and then the other one was like the the toilet stopped working or something for a little bit. But that's like very impressive because there's so many things that could have gone wrong and we've seen many of them um you know we've had uh ships blow up on launch we've had them blow up on re-entry um we've had tests that went wrong that caused fires that that you know cost astronauts their lives and it's just very impressive that we have built this enormous body of knowledge and it's something that we can trust you can trust it enough that you can stick four people in a little box and send them out you know thousands of miles beyond the furthest point that any humans have gone before I think it's so it's it's so cool at how um like efficient and just effective and competent NASA is at something like that. It's very cool.
SPEAKER_02100% and that was like my main argument well I'm gonna call it an argument but my I had a lot of people while I was posting about Artemis too is just like well why are we just doing a lunar flyby I thought we were landing we've already landed why are we going backwards and I think people really just do not understand all that has to come together for something to work that well and it's like if you saw my reaction to just the launch I was boohoo crying because being there for a launch in general for a crewed launch is super you understand what can go wrong as somebody who's been in the field. I'm very close to um Mr Carl McNair who's the brother of Dr. Ron McNair who passed away in a challenger accident. And so like that's a direct connection of somebody that I know that lost somebody in such a like one of the most kind of impactful space flight his historical moments ever. And like that's always weighed on me and it's always kind of kept safety at the forefront of my mind as an engineer because I'm not really interested in just going fast for the sake of going fast. I'm like this stuff is cool it's great it's awesome but like there are people at the helm of this thing and there are people trusting us as engineers to get them up and back safely. And so and and so just that phase of that of the entire mission just the launch phase so much can go wrong. And so just knowing that they were safe was huge. And then you know they have to actually do the mission and that was a long mission and then they're coming back and then we know re-entry Columbia disaster that you know like you said it it broke apart um upon re-entry and so it's like you really can't exhale until the end.
SPEAKER_05And so I think the general public loses that context and then they're like well we did this in the 60s why can't we just do it again like just do it again and they're like well hold on it's been it's been however many years since the 60s and we have to build up competence again we have to build up we have to make sure our procedures have not um have kept up with the times with our technology we have to ensure that everything can come together and ensure you know cohesion across so many different stakeholders like the amount of people the amount of companies just involved in SLS is probably like hundreds what's SLS thank you space launch system which is the rocket that actually launched and took them to space right because you've got you've got somebody that maybe makes the rocket yeah that the rocket itself may be made of components that are coming from different places right and that and the rockets all need to work in perfect unison with all these other components and there's probably different companies that are doing some of the software engineering and so there's literally like dozens of companies maybe thousands and thousands and thousands of people coming together and it it doesn't matter if we landed on the moon with obsolete rockets that we don't use anymore right you built a new rocket we're not using the same I remember that there's um been people at NASA who described that that sort of like simple and obvious fact I think as us having lost the knowledge andor technology and it's like we did lose the technology because we're not using rockets from the 60s that's not the technology that we're using they may be rockets that are like similar in principle but they're definitely different. They're gonna have many improvements you know we've improved the aerodynamics that help you get out of the atmosphere we've improved however many number of um you know aspects of that system it's like you need to test all those again and if you think about Artemis for a crewed uh mission to just be an Artemis II is a massive improvement in iteration from the early ones right um the equivalent in the Apollo missions I believe was Apollo 10 where you sent the astronauts around the moon and then they actually landed Apollo 11 well what was Apollo 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 and 9 those were all like what we basically did in Artemis 18 yeah it was Apollo 7 Apollo 7 that was the first crewed mission but still the point still and wait can you check i so I think there were multiple then crewed before Apollo 11 right yeah I believe so let's see so a seven was the first one yeah so I mean uh yeah either way the there is a a massive um increase in like our iteration and oh yeah yeah seven eight nine and ten were all crewed missions it looks like leading up to Apollo 11.
SPEAKER_02Sounds right yeah it's yeah you you hit the nail on the head like just I had a chance to actually go behind the scenes on um sls and see its rollout to um the launch pad and yeah I mean the RS25s are from one company which are the um the engines that are or yeah the core stage engines and then the actual core stage is from Boeing and it's it's and you know even when you go back to Challenger and the failure there that was like an O-ring. That was like a very very very tiny aspect from probably a very very um specific company that that failed you know and so yeah just the the the the sheer it's it's it's just monumentous it's just huge it's kind of unfathomable how much has to work together. And I think honestly being at NASA right now is giving me a much better appreciation for it because even for us working on the power propulsion element you know we have a contractor that's worth that and you know we're we're tracking everything down to the the washers on the spacecraft and those are not from the company obviously they get those from McMaster car but all these things have to be rated they have to they have to um undergo a bunch of stress tests and environmental testing and all this extra stuff and so I have a much better appreciation just kind of being in the mix and having to kind of interface with all the different people and just all the subsystems that come together for spacecraft in general are it's mind blowing. And it's my favorite part about it. I love to watch it all come together and see like the integration just integration has always been interesting to me because it's like okay this thing does this thing does that how does it work together to accomplish this and and that's what systems is and I have a really good idea that now and I think having that experience has given me an even more even more appreciation for what we've been able to accomplish as an agency for sure it's I'm very proud to be there for sure.
SPEAKER_05Yeah that's so awesome and I'm uh low key jealous uh very very awesome and you know you've worked you've worked so hard and I've kind of seen that we probably met towards the beginning of both of our times in grad school just about yeah 2023 two or three something like that it was a yeah it was a a couple years ago and it's yeah I mean it's it's so cool to be able to to work towards these things. I remember when Artemis II launched it there was this overwhelming feeling of us doing something incredible that is gotta be one of the most difficult and rare things. You know a lot of times we talk about is there life in other places And and that sort of thing. And I'm sure that there is, but I don't know how often it can take some of the rocks that are on the planet and put them in the right configuration that they can get in and leave the planet. Like that's got to be something that I mean, it's something that it wasn't even clear if we were going to be able to do at one point, right?
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Those delays and yeah, but just in general, like if you go back decades, um it was like not clear that we were gonna be able to send people in space, like they started sending like gnats in space at one point, and then they sent like rats, and then they sent dogs and chimps. They were like, Okay, this is something that we can do. And I don't know, it's just like such an incredible feat for a species, I think. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I completely agree. I have always I've always found um not celebrities, astronauts to be my celebrities because I consider them the ambassadors of our species. Like what the Artemis II crew did, they put their eyes on something that no humans have ever seen before. Like that is never lost on me. Like that is, and that has to be like such an honor, like just kind of paving the way for the rest of humanity to get this information. It's it's always been super fascinating to me. Um, no pun intended, Mr. Fascinating. But um yeah, I I I absolutely love that. And that's kind of like what drives me to want to be an astronaut. Like, I want to be humanity's ambassador. I want to, I want to go do something we've never done before just to show you that we can do it and what we can benefit from learning it too. I think one of the things I like to kind of talk about on my platform is just like space exploration is great, it's fun, but it's also not just for the sake of looking at things we've never seen or doing things we've never done. There's so many technological transfers that happen that truly revolutionize technology on Earth, you know. And Artemis 2 did have that component that I don't think many people knew about. Um, there is something called, did you guys hear about the Avatar chips?
SPEAKER_06I don't think so.
SPEAKER_02Oh, cool. Okay, you've been our fact checker, Justin. If you can look it up to to find the acronym I can't remember, but essentially what they had were like these organ on a chip um chips, pretty much that they sent up.
SPEAKER_05They took those to space, yes.
SPEAKER_02They took those.
SPEAKER_05I feel like we actually have talked. I remember we had on a um a stem cell researcher early early on several months ago, so yeah, and uh so was talking about these organ on a chips and like simulating human organs. Yes, and so if I can get if I can guess right to what you're saying, they're sort of like testing what the impact of the organ would be, but you're doing a ver a digital version so that it's not so they're not testing it on like our heart and our our lungs.
SPEAKER_06So the acronym Avatar is a virtual astronaut tissue analog response. That guy, so yeah, it contains human bone marrow cells derived from the astronaut themselves, yes, and it flew aboard uh the Orion spacecraft.
SPEAKER_02An Artemis Tim.
SPEAKER_06Wow, interesting.
SPEAKER_02It was incredible. And I got to talk to one of the PIs, the principal investigators. We did a whole interview, which I still need to edit and post. But one of the things that was beautiful about that technology, bringing that ability to essentially take your organ or take a cell from you, test it in an environment, right, as opposed to testing you and making you the guinea pig, imagine what you could do with that on earth. Like that, and that technology transfer is already happening. They already have collaborations with the NIH, so the National Institute of Health, where they're, you know, getting this technology and the data and the analyses into the hands of people, you know, doing the work on Earth, of course. But imagine like what that can do for healthcare. Um, instead of having all these treatments to um or testing out all these treatments and going thousands of dollars into debt, you know, you can just, you know, give, get put your cell on a chip and have have researchers test the treatments kind of in the controlled environment on the chip and then seeing if it's if it works for you for if it doesn't. And then if it does, then you actually get what you need. And so the impact to me was not just for healthcare, but just like healthcare for minorities and understudied factions of people on earth. So, like, you know, black folks, it's it's very clear that we've been understudied in the realm of healthcare. Women, especially, we've very clear we've been understudied. And so, how do we get specialized care for folks like that without having to rewrite, you know, or write our historical wrongs on the fact that, you know, we just haven't done the studies. So you can just take people's individual stem cells, say, hey, this works for you, this doesn't, and and go from there. And so that was something that like really resonated with me because again, space exploration is great, but it's like there's super tangible impacts back on Earth to people that are underrepresented in various ways, you know. Um, and that was definitely like a very clear example of that, which is Avatar. And that was led by a bunch of women too, which I found very fascinating too, um, just considering the impact that it could have for healthcare for women on Earth.
SPEAKER_05So yeah, that's so cool. And when you, you know, you point out that you know you can imagine everybody getting this individualized uh healthcare where if you know, if if if we can simulate the organs and then maybe like one day the whole body, uh right, and like sufficiently, then you can find out exactly what the best treatment for everybody is for any given body, which I think is so powerful. And then going even a step further, uh in thinking about like brain chemistry and if you could if you could even replicate something like that with mental health, and you can help people figure out what the best like routine or prescription or um you know what daily daily habits that any given person could start implementing in their life. That you know, you sort of have this um this tested this study. Maybe you could run like thousands of iterations with your exact brain structure and and body type, and you could literally figure out in as um you know in as real as a uh a scientific scientific study could get what the best thing for each of us as individuals would be. That's really cool. Then I think you're kind of talking about having a full human population where everybody is operating at their healthiest and their um their optimized version physically, mentally, emotionally. I think that's really cool. That's like one of the those are these are like the optimistic things that I think are you know where our technological trajectory could lead us to. And it's important to remember those because so many of the stories that we hear about and worry about when it comes to the advancement of technology are these like dystopian things and all the ways that it could go horribly wrong for this.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely, yeah. And that was kind of one of the things I was talking to Dr. Um, so the the PI I got to speak to uh Dr. Lisa Carnell. So look her up. She's incredible, she's been leading that effort. We got to talk about just kind of how, like, it's literally in the best way revolutionizing it could revolutionize healthcare in the right hands, obviously. Um, and it's it's one of those things where it's like, okay, like where we want our priorities as the human race to go. Like, I feel like that's definitely one of the ways. And you talked about like mental health, and another component of our um Artemis 2 was I believe that they specifically had like the plant lab working on, you know, just making sure we can do agriculture in space. That's just, you know, one important thing for long duration missions, make sure we can grow food and all those things. But a big part of that was also mental health of the astronauts. It's like, you know, they might need some remnants of Earth to maintain their mental health, but in what ways is that transferred to Earth? Like, like what type of environments could we cultivate just based off the data we get from these long duration space missions? What type of data transfer can happen to the mental health industry where we say, well, look, you know, this plant has this type of effect on the on the mind. And and this, you know, induces some type of calm state, or this is what we saw with astronauts in literal in one of the harshest environments they could ever experience. But, you know, they're calm because of, you know, this, I don't know, combination or hybrid plant, you know, there's just so much. And that's kind of where my mind goes. And that's kind of the thing that fascinates me and gets me the most excited about um Earth is that there's so many impacts to, I'm sorry, not Earth, but space exploration, because there's so many impacts to people on Earth. And like that's their buy-in. Because I think a lot of people don't see like why they should care. And it's because of things like this. It's like um even the Apollo days, uh, I believe a lot of the stuff that came back from Apollo was why we have um a lot of the medical advancements we do now. Um, MRIs are are one of are one of those examples. And yeah, it's that's just the one thing I like to keep at the forefront of people's minds when I talk about it because it's just like, you know, this is this does, this should matter to you. This is the best case scenario, and in the right hands, like we can do some really, really powerful stuff with the things we learn in space.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, we got insulin pumps, kidney dialysis, uh, implantable defibrillators for your heart that were all byproducts of NASA missions, the Apollo space program specifically.
SPEAKER_00Sick.
SPEAKER_05Uh like that's in that's that's insane. Um, and I think a lot of people don't know that. I think even in this conversation right now, I mean, I had no idea that they had these Oregon on a chips that were going up in space. And I think that one thing that um NASA could could, should, and needs to do better in this modern um like media landscape is be like either finding ways to amplify the fact that this sort of thing is going on, because I mean, like, that's something that I suspect most people would be interested in hearing. That's something that I think any given person would have a hard time um uh sort of arguing against or opposing as a way of advancing the overall health of every potentially every human being on earth. Uh and yeah, like that's something that there should like that. I feel like there should be ongoing campaigns tracking, right? Not only like, hey, this is a thing that they were doing, but an update on like and this is some of the stuff that they learned, and this is the next step. And you know, they're gonna be launched uh also, like I don't know, maybe they're gonna be on the Artemis III mission, or if not, um Artemis IV, when actually we do go back to the moon.
SPEAKER_06So yeah, maybe I don't know if you know this, Naya. You you might have more of an inside perspective on this, but like if there's a department at NASA whose responsibility is specifically to communicate why is NASA important to you, everyday person. Like I know NASA has social media pages and they have these space images that are gorgeous and they go super viral. But then, you know, is there like a more practical, you know, page or department or communications arena at NASA? That's just like, look, this is why this makes sense. Because I think, you know, yeah, to Dakota's point, a lot of people just have questions, like reasonable questions, especially when you're outside of this bubble of like, well, you're going to space for what? Like, I can't put food on my table. You know what I mean? So why are my tax dollars funding that? You know what I mean? Absolutely. Um, so sure.
SPEAKER_02So I I'm probably ignorant if there is a specific kind of um organization for it, but I know that is a big part of NASA social, like kind of having these um, I mean, they're not always people with huge platforms, like they NASA to me does a really good job just like really expanding the net and finding and touching all different types of niches. Because the last NASA social I went to, there was like gamers there, there are people that had no affiliation to space, and you know, they still got to experience that. And I think that that does a good job at just like spreading the information to folks that would probably otherwise not know about it. But Avatar, you know, that was we got to speak to the SMEs or the subject matter experts about it, and we got to interview them. And so they do a good job setting up those types of environments for basically instead of it coming directly from NASA, you hear it from like, you know, your favorite social media influencers. And so that's kind of why I I ended up kind of specifically asking to talk to Dr. Lisa Carnell because I was obsessed with Avatar when I first heard about it. And again, the implications as a black woman, you know, for black people and women, you know, um, in healthcare, Avatar just really piqued my interest. And they they set up an interview like the next week. And so there's a desire to communicate that information for sure. Um, and how they're doing so seems to be through mainly NASA social. It's like people who are already already good at communicating science and already have these niche audiences, you know, let's just pull them and give them the information they need and let them disseminate it how they see fit. And so um, yeah. And so that that's why I said like that's a big, that's what I would love my platform to be more about. It's just like kind of pulling in why it matters because it isn't lost on me that like there are people that are struggling um and that can't really see the the point of space expiration. And it reminds me honestly of like the 60s where they had protests outside of Kennedy Space Center where they were like, um, you know, you're putting people on the moon, but you know, we can't eat, we're poor. And it's like those are those are very, very valid criticisms and claims. And so um, it's something I've always held space for and so in a and a bridge I've always wanted to um be, or I'm sorry, a gap I've always wanted to be a bridge for. And so yeah, I I don't know specifically, I know the communications office does a really good job too, picking out folks for specific niches so that they can kind of speak to the value, but yeah, uh yeah, I hope that answers your question.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah, no, no, that's that's super helpful. Um, so a couple more little quick things. So uh we talked a little bit, like you seem to be you have one of these kind of careers that seems like it was inspired by science fiction. I think we uh we talked a little bit about your favorite Marvel character, right? It's uh you said it was Riri Williams.
SPEAKER_01Yes, Riri Williams is one of my favorites for sure. That's my girl.
SPEAKER_06Um you feel like you feel like you like consumed a lot of sci-fi as a young person. Like I always wonder like what that spark is, right? For someone to have a dream to become an astronaut. And then, you know, I feel like a lot of kids might say that, but then you took the tangible steps forward. It's like, what even created that spark in you to think that that's something that's possible?
SPEAKER_02Hmm, thank you for that question. It's one of my favorites because I've always felt like I was kind of one of those strange kids. Like, I was definitely strange. My mom tells stories about me when I was a kid where like I would be fascinated by like the smallest things. Like, I remember learning about the water cycle in elementary school, and I was taking a shower and I was seeing like the water condense on the mirror, and I like ran out in a towel, like, mom, the water cycle's happening in our bathroom. And she she tells that story all the time. And I used to hate it, but now I see I see what she means. It's just like I've always been fascinated by science and how things work. And then um, I remember specifically taking a class in the eighth grade called Earth Space Science. And at this time, I already knew I really liked science. I knew I liked engineering too, um, before eighth grade, because another story she tells is I would I grew up with boys and they always had like model cars. And so I would always look at the underbody of the model cars and just like redraw them. And I got in my head one day that like I could uh design a car that like runs on oxygen. Like I was just making stuff up as I went. But the the fact that I was thinking that way showed that like, okay, she's she likes to learn how things work. And so when I got involved in or when I got into that class about space, it was just like a something clicked. I was just like, oh wow, like this feels like the perfect environment for all of my curiosity to thrive. Like I just felt like space was so enigmatic and mysterious and that the possibilities were endless. And I was already a very imaginative child. Like I was always thinking and in my head and you know, thinking of scenarios and all this type of stuff. I was like, literally anything could be the case out there. Um, and so that really stuck with me. And I remember we had to take like these aptitude tests in elementary school for like, you know, where are you gonna go? I mean, what career is best suited for you? And I didn't like what I got. So I ended up researching careers that involve science, engineering, and space, and I found airspace. And then that following, well, I ended up, you know, just doing a lot of research on it, and I found a summer camp at Ember Riddle, which is my alma mater for undergrad. And I signed up and the next year I was there, and it was one of those things where it was like, I just I found what I liked and I was just super laser focused on it. And I tend to do that because the same thing happened with me discovering electric propulsion, which is very sci-fi looking. Like it, I I got I got accepted to NASA, and then we did I did my first rotation there, and they do like a bunch of different tours. And one of the big tours that they do are of the electric propulsion facilities because um Glenn has a core competency electric propulsion, like they have the state-of-the-art, you know, vacuum chambers that are huge. Um, and they're it's super cool, and it just looked like something out of a movie. Like, I don't know if you can maybe I don't know if we can pull up a picture of a haul thruster um running, but there's like a blue plume that's coming out the back of this thing and it looks like something out of Star Wars.
SPEAKER_06Right. Can you say it again? How do you how do you spell that?
SPEAKER_02Sure. Um, hall effects. So H-A-L-L and then E F F E C T and then thruster.
SPEAKER_06Oh, okay, hall effect.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Sorry, I'm probably talking fast.
SPEAKER_06Okay, no, it's okay. No, keep going. I got you.
SPEAKER_02Okay, yeah. It I just love to show people that because it's hard to explain in words, like how cool that looks. And um, it was during that that tour that I was like, oh, I love this. And then I had just taken physics too, which was like EM, so electricity and magnetism, and I really like that. And um, yeah, there it is. Um, that's a Hall Effect Duster. That's basically what I spent the last seven years doing or working on.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, you I remember seeing these on your story. Yeah, I remember it looking more purple, the one that you were using, though.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so it depends on the the the propellant you use. So these are on xenon. Xenon typically has a blue plume, and then if you put it on or if you run it on krypton, so if you put krypton in the search bar, you might get a more purple plume.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, if you're listening to us audio only, we can see like a ring, it looks like a the back of a rocket thruster, but it's like blue, uh like white and blue light coming out of it, is what it looks like, right? But this is what what what are you what are we seeing right here, Naya?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so this is the exhaust. This is like so in a chemical rocket, it typically looks like fire. That's your plume, that's your thruster plume. That's actually kind of directing all the energy to go the opposite direction. This is the thruster plume for an electric rocket, it's a plasma, and that's how it looks.
SPEAKER_05Type in Krypton, yeah.
SPEAKER_06Uh Krypton, like uh K-R-Y-K-T-O-N, yeah. Isn't that the planet that Superman is from?
SPEAKER_01It is Kyle.
SPEAKER_06Let's see. Um, one second, I have to reshare.
SPEAKER_02Okay, I love this. Yeah, purple's my favorite color, so I love running them on Krypton.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Oh so I guess this is Krypton right here.
SPEAKER_05No, but did you look up Krypton Hall effect thruster?
SPEAKER_06Oh, you just said Krypton. Yeah, Krypton Hall effect thruster.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. There we go. So that looks like that actually looks like the H9 in that first picture. Oh, it's Colorado. Not that, yeah, that that one that you're on. That's an example that's definitely looking more like Krypton. It's like a darker bluish purple hue. Um and yeah, I I saw that basically running at NASA Glenn, and I was like, I like electric electricity and magnetism, and that's those are two fundamental kind of aspects of this technology. And I love propulsion already, and I knew I I like CubeSats too. So um I was always I was very interested in like small sat propulsion, and this kind of fit the bill for all of it, and I was like, this is what I'm doing for grad school.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, what tell tell the audience what cubesats are too. I know.
SPEAKER_02Oh, sure. Sorry about that. So CubeSats are an I call them um, well, they are, they're like nanosatellites. So satellites traditionally were like these one-ton huge spacecraft. Um, CubeSats came on the market and essentially condensed all the operations of like a one-ton thing into something that can be the size of a loaf of bread. And so one U is typically like the volume standard that they use. So one U is like, I think four by four by four inches. And then if you want to expand the size of it, you just stack another U and another U. So if you have a three U CubeSat, that ends up literally being the size of a loaf of bread. And so it's like these miniaturized operations. For cool science. So you could put a whole bunch of stuff on there. You could do all types of stuff with them. And what I love about it is it opened the door for a lot of different people to get engaged in sending up spacecraft. So, like from universities to high schoolers, and I think even a middle schooler has been involved in a CubeSat launch initiative and were able to send their experiment to space. And so I was always interested in how do we kind of use those for different mission applications. I was more interested in lunar stuff. And um, you can put little miniature Hall effect dusters or dusters, even ion dusters, um on these CubeSats and have them propelled around space. And so all that just opened the door for my grad school journey. And I was just like, this is what I'm doing. I never look back. So I tend to just like find something I like and I'm I put blinders on. And so I find that that's probably probably different for most than most children. Like they need maybe like an external thing to see before, or maybe somebody doing it. And so like I found my mentors and my role models after I'd already decided what I wanted to do. I was like, okay, I want to do this, who's done it before? Um, and so that's kind of what guided a lot of me sharing online because it's like I know that I was kind of blessed to just kind of know what I wanted and do it. A lot of people just need exposure to see somebody else doing it to know, and so um that's why I would share what I did, but that's kind of my origin story.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah, I think it's important to um to find like mentors, which it I which I don't even think always has to be. It's it'd be nice if it's somebody you can come into contact with and know, but just to realize that there are actually other people who have done whatever it is, uh usually that you're interested in doing. And is especially these days, it's it's pretty easy to look up how they got there or like you know what the steps are, and that's very important for like preparing yourself to be able to like be um competitive if you need to apply for some stuff or build up some relevant experience and just realize that you know any person that you come across has like a path that you can probably pull some some lessons from, or um at least sequentially figure out like which what are the best next steps and that sort of thing. It's very cool.
SPEAKER_02100%. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Uh so this should be coming out either one or two weeks before Black Space Week. So you want to plug, you want to plug some stuff with Black and Astro and Black Space Week?
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. So we have our flagship um kind of week for Black, well, Black and Astro, which is called Black Space Week. So the week of Juneteenth. Um and we'll have, you know, our usual, we have grad school and um undergraduate research showcases, which are kind of my favorite parts, is just kind of seeing just how smart and brilliant our community is from all levels. Um, we have a bunch, we have panels of of different, different, I guess, areas within space. So not just space and the technology or space in the science of space, but also the space law or the kind of humanity side of space. Um, and I always love that we we have and we hold room for both. I think that's always super necessary. And so um plenty, plenty of stuff to plug into. You should be able to find by now the um full agenda for the week on blackandastro.com. And yeah, just plug in. It's very easy. You can just register for our various webinars, and yeah, we'll be happy to see people um get plugged in.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, lots of dope stuff. So definitely check that out, get registered. There's uh yeah, there's something different typically every day. So yeah, something for everybody.
SPEAKER_02Yes, exactly. Something for everybody, like the enthusiasts for the people that are more on the humanity side, for the people that are more on the kind of technology and the science side. So it's a it's a great week. And of course it's Juneteenth as well. Yeah, and um, yeah, we're just celebrating being black in this in this industry.
SPEAKER_05So here's a question that I wonder if you've ever thought of. Um, when are you gonna write a book?
SPEAKER_01That's so wild that you asked me that. That feels like confirmation.
SPEAKER_02I'm working on it. I'm working on it. I um we yeah, we talked a little bit about it's it's like nowhere near formulation. Like it's literally just been, it was something me and God talked about actually last year, where I was just like, I think that my journey through school has been very unique. And I think that this could probably touch a lot of folks just because I struggled a lot and like a whole bunch of stuff happened, and I I had to pull on a lot of I just had to have a lot of fortitude. And um, I think there's just a lot of lessons in my story and hopefully like warnings and guide rails for others, just like to take better care of themselves because I haven't really talked about this facet of like my platform and what I care about, but mental health is huge for me. Um, and I've definitely struggled with it. And so um I I intend to put it all in a book um at some point. And I my agent and I have been throwing back some idea or I guess throwing each other some ideas and and walking through that process. But I love that you asked because I was just like, Do I need to do this?
SPEAKER_01Should I? But like my Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05I think you have a super interesting story that a lot of people I think could learn a lot from. And um, yeah, I think that you have like a story to look up to, definitely.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, I second that.
SPEAKER_06I second that. Um, so Naya, where can people find out more about you?
SPEAKER_02Sure. Uh, you can follow me on most platforms as Astronaya. Um, so Astro and then Naya. I think I put Dr. No, it's not Dr. Astronaya yet. I probably should introduce that at some point, but yeah, Astronaya on all platforms. I think there's like an underscore at the end of that for Instagram, but um, yeah, find me there, and I have a website also that needs updating, but will be updated very soon. Naya Butlercrick.com.
SPEAKER_06Okay, okay, cool. Well, Naya, this has been a blast. Thank you for joining us. And everybody, if you're still tuned in, we appreciate your time. And as always, stay curious. Peace.
SPEAKER_01Peace.