1 Marsha Ivins - What It's Like To Spend 55 Days in Space

Inquiring Minds

Science, Society & Culture, Neuroscience, Female Host, Interview, Social Sciences, Critical Thinking

4.4 • 848 Ratings

🗓️ 20 September 2013

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There aren't many people on Earth who have spent more of their life in space than Marsha Ivins. A veteran of five space shuttle missions, Ivins has spent a total of 55 days in orbit, on missions devoted to such diverse tasks as deploying satellites, conducting scientific research, and docking with Mir and the International Space Station. This episode features an interview with Ivins, where she relates some of her in-orbit experiences—such as how your body and brain slowly adapt to the fact that no single direction is up or down. Plus, for the benefit of geeks across the universe, she also explains why the Borg cube from Star Trek can maneuver just as well in space as any starfighter that Hollywood has dreamed up. She discusses why publicly supported space missions are still vital, what it will take to get us to Mars and beyond, and why solving advanced space travel problems (energy, propulsion) might simultaneously help us solve many of our problems on Earth—perhaps including global warming. This episode also features a discussion about new developments in science, including research suggesting that political biases are so pervasive that they can interfere with your ability to do math, and mounting evidence of the dangers of head injuries received from playing football.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's Friday, September 20th, and you're listening to Inquiring Minds.
0:07.6	Each week, we bring you a new in-depth exploration of the space where science, politics, and society collide.
0:13.6	We endeavor to find out what's true, what's left to discover, and why it all matters.
0:17.9	You can find us online at climatedust.org, and you can follow us on Twitter
0:22.5	at Inquiring Show. That's Inquiring Show. And on Facebook at slash Inquiring Minds podcast.
0:31.8	And this is our first episode in this new platform. Let us just introduce ourselves for a minute.
0:36.9	I'm Inj Viscontas.
0:38.1	I'm a neuroscientist and an opera singer, and I'm particularly interested in bringing science to the
0:42.6	public. Yeah, and who am I? I'm Chris Mooney, and I'm a journalist and author who writes about
0:49.0	science and society. I'm a contributing writer at Mother Jones and Climate Desk, which is sponsoring this podcast.
0:56.0	This week on the show, we have an amazing interview with a friend of mine who is a former
1:00.8	American astronaut, and she's been to space five times. Yep, that's right, five times,
1:07.1	more than almost anyone else in the history of humanity. Chris, I'm going to tell you a little bit
1:11.8	more about her in a minute. But first, I think it's important for us to go over some of the headlines
1:16.2	and some of the important issues that are going on this week so that we can explore that place where
1:23.1	science and society collide. That's a special place where we live, right? So I'm so glad,
1:29.6	Andrea, that we find ourselves back on the air. I want to pick your brain about an article I did.
1:35.0	It's one of my most viral in a while. First was at Mother Jones. Now it's at Grist. Then people
1:40.7	have done versions of it. It's at Salon. It's at Huffington Post. It's an alternate and everywhere people are talking about it.
1:46.9	And I guess readers might want to Google it just so they know what we're talking about.
1:49.8	If you just Google, politics wrecks your ability to do math, I assure you you will find this.
1:55.3	And so let me give a little background. Then you can tell me what you think.
	...

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