How To Kill Time In Space

Happy To Be Here

Greta Johnsen

Improvement, Nerd, Culture, Wbez, Pop, Books, Society & Culture, Nerdette, Self, Tv & Film, Technology, Nerds, Tv

4.6 • 924 Ratings

🗓️ 4 May 2018

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Near the end of STS-125, NASA’s final space shuttle mission to the Hubble Space Telescope back in 2009, bad weather in Florida initially stopped the seven-member team from returning to Earth. The two-day delay that followed presented the astronauts with some unusual but much needed downtime. So what did they do with it?

Looked out the windows.

“I liked to listen to music and watch the world go by,” said Megan McArthur, a mission specialist on the Space Shuttle Atlantis. “It was pretty awesome.”

For our new project, Power Up, we're asking fascinating people to explain how they set themselves up for success while living in (and, in this case, off of) an exhausting world.

McArthur told us about the seemingly difficult task of relaxing in outer space. She also described her role in helping the American Girl doll company create Luciana, a Chilean-American who is an aspiring astronaut.

“It helps for people to see a role model who represents them, right?” McArthur said of Luciana. “[Someone] who looks like them, maybe who has a similar experience as they have, in order for them to imagine themselves in that same kind of environment.”

McArthur described her own experience meeting a role model: astronaut Sally Ride, who McArthur says she met when she was 16 years old. She says the 20-minute conversation with Ride, the first American woman to travel to space, was “a special and unique experience for someone just starting to think about what they want to do with their life.”

Tell us how you power up!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Natalie Moore. I fell in love with soap operas when I was just five years old, and I still
0:06.1	watch them. Their television's longest scripted series and have zero reruns. Now let me tell you,
0:12.7	soap operas aren't just some silly art form. They are significant. In this season of making,
0:18.0	Stories Without End from WBEZ Chicago.
0:25.7	Join me as I share how the genre began, their social impact, and why these stories endure.
0:28.3	Listen, wherever you get your podcast.
0:36.5	From WBEZ Chicago, I am Greta Johnson, and this is Power Up a new project from Nerdap Podcast.
0:41.6	Life can be hectic.
0:48.0	Between work and the bills and keeping up with Westworld, everyone has to manage intense workloads,
0:51.5	even scientists and poets and astronauts and adventurers.
0:53.1	So we want to know. how do successful, inspiring people set
0:56.1	themselves up for success in an exhausting world? Last week, we talked with two wonderful comedians,
1:02.3	Amy Schumer and 80 Bryant. And this week, we're talking with someone in a slightly different line
1:07.5	of work. We are talking with Megan MacArthur. She works for NASA, and in 2009,
1:13.1	she was a mission specialist on a trip to the Hubble Space Telescope. That means that yes,
1:18.7	Megan is one of only about 500 humans who have traveled out of this world.
1:28.3	What is an average day like in space? What is an average day like in space?
1:31.3	Well, there's probably not really an average day in space.
1:35.3	That's one of the great things about it.
1:37.3	Every day is a little bit different with new challenges.
1:40.3	We do have an entire team of folks on the ground that plan pretty much every minute of every day in space, but unexpected things do still happen.
1:48.5	Basically, you wake up, but there's a tradition on the space shuttle where your family will choose a wake-up song for you.
	...

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