You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Well, well, well. NPR Science correspondent Jeff Brumfield,

guess you decided to poke your little head up again for another shortwave episode.

Emily, it's been too long.

And today, I'm pleased to tell you I've got something fun to talk about, kind of some summer fun.

Oh, thank goodness. Okay, let's go.

So, to get things going, just start by telling me your favorite sci-fi shows and movies.

Well, you know my family loves Star Trek, die hard Treckies.

I like the Avengers, Black Panther, Captain Marvel, all those movies are really good.

All fantastic choices. I'm a Trek guy myself.

But I will say one thing.

These shows and movies, they've all skipped over the big problem with space travel.

And that is actually getting around.

Oh, like flying from one place to another.

And I'm not really talking about like Trek Tech, like a warp drive that lets you jump huge distances across the galaxy.

We all know that's the full realm of sci-fi.

I'm talking about the basic business of getting from point A to point B in space.

It is a really tough engineering problem, Emily.

Jeff, you said this would be fun.

You're taking space flying and turning it into an engineering problem.

Are you going to ruin my favorite shows?

No, I'm going to enrich your understanding of your favorite shows, Emily,

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