Transcript from 255: Jellyfish Are Pretty Badass with Ariel Waldman, Elecia White, and Christopher White.

Welcome to Embedded. I'm Elecia White, alongside Christopher White. And today we're going to talk about space hacking. I guess that's cracking the passwords on comets and planets to see what's inside? At least I hope so. We'll find out. Our guest is Ariel Waldman, and I'm sure that she can help us figure it out.

CW (00:00:28):

Hi, Ariel. Thanks for joining us on the show.

AW (00:00:29):

Thanks so much for having me.

EW (00:00:32):

I saw you speak at the MBARI speaker series, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute speaker series, but for our listeners who aren't familiar with you, could you tell us about yourself as though you were on a technical panel?

AW (00:00:48):

As if I was on a technical panel? Wow.

EW (00:00:51):

Yeah, our listeners are mostly hardware and software engineers, so you can talk science to them.

AW (00:00:57):

Be geeky. Yeah. So for me, most of what I do is focus on making science more inclusive and accessible to people from all different backgrounds to contribute to. My work spans a lot of different projects. One of which is that I'm the founder of Spacehack.org, which is a directory of ways for anyone to participate in space exploration.

AW (00:01:20):

I am also the global director of Science Hack Day, a weekend event in which scientists, designers, and developers from all over get together to see what they can prototype in one weekend. And I do a lot of other things. I'm the author of the book, "What's It Like in Space?" I do a lot of interesting work, traveling around and getting different science communities started.

AW (00:01:44):

I was on a National Academy of Sciences committee about the future of human spaceflight, advising the nation on how to build a sustainable human spaceflight program over the next several decades. And I am also the advisor to NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts, which is NASA's more futuristic sci-fiesque sort of program that funds kind of out there ideas that could be transformative to future space missions.

EW (00:02:13):

So many things. So many questions.

AW (00:02:16):

[Laughter]. Yes, I know, and that's only a short sampling of everything. But yeah,...I like to do a lot of geeky different things.

EW (00:02:24):

And your background is as an artist.

AW (00:02:27):

Yes. Yeah. So I started working while in sort of the art world, I guess. I went to art school, and I got my degree in graphic design. So I didn't really do anything science or space-related until the last few years.

EW (00:02:45):

And how have you gotten into science?

AW (00:02:50):

Yeah, it was kind of an unexpected scenario for me. So I had gone to art school, and was working at an ad agency, and had recently moved to San Francisco, and I was watching a documentary about NASA one evening. And I thought it was a really cool documentary, because it was interviewing all of the old guys who used to work in mission control.

AW (00:03:19):

And they were talking about how, when they were hired at NASA, they didn't know anything about spacecrafts, or space exploration really at all. And they were having to figure it out as they went along. And so I was listening to this, and thinking to myself, "Well, I don't know anything about space exploration, and I want a job at NASA. That sounds amazing." And so I decided just on a whim to email someone at NASA that I had never met.

AW (00:03:44):

I just got ahold of someone's email address at NASA, and I just emailed them. And I said I was a huge fan of NASA, which was true for all of a week or so at that point. And I kind of volunteered myself, and I very, very unexpectedly ended up getting a job from that email. They emailed me back, and they sent me a job description that they had posted that day.

AW (00:04:07):

And I applied for the job, and I ended up getting a job at NASA. And it completely changed everything for me, because it really made me realize...not only that it was just incredible that I even had the opportunity, but that there were a lot of opportunities like that for people like me to get involved in space exploration.

AW (00:04:28):

And I really just set out on a mission to give other people the same sort of opportunities that have been afforded to me. Or similar things, where they value their existing skill sets and backgrounds to be able to contribute to science and space exploration in valuable ways.

EW (00:04:47):

How did you learn the science pieces of it though? I mean, you speak very eloquently about the specifics of computer vision and the biology pieces of it. How do you learn that part?

AW (00:05:03):

I mean, for me, I think a lot of it is I really value embedding myself in different communities. So when I moved to San Francisco, I became very embedded in the tech communities and the tech startups. And so, I feel like the majority of my friends are actually probably in tech, not in science. And on the science side of things, I try to go to synthetic biology workshops, or just get to talk to more biologists.

AW (00:05:34):

I can't say that I know the intricate inner workings of everything, but I do make an effort to get to know people in these different disciplines. And through getting to know people, then I really have time to process how science works, and how to effectively translate that to other disciplines, either within science or outside of science.

AW (00:05:58):

So I think a lot of it is social. I think a lot of it is showing up to the places in which different people work and socialize. And I think that goes a long way.

EW (00:06:10):

Okay. Well, I actually have more questions in this vein, but we are supposed to be doing lightning round, where we ask you short questions, and we want you to have short answers. And if we are behaving ourselves, which I won't be, we won't ask you "Why?" and "How?" and all of the other things. Are you ready?

AW (00:06:27):

I guess. Go for it.

CW (00:06:29):

What's the coolest satellite?

AW (00:06:31):

Coolest satellite. Oh, including space probes?

CW (00:06:35):

Sure.

AW (00:06:35):

Well, I mean, I'm just going to have to go Voyager 1. I mean, it's the farthest, so that one's easy enough.

EW (00:06:42):

Definitely coldest.

CW (00:06:43):

Probably coldest too, yeah.

EW (00:06:43):

[Laughter].

AW (00:06:43):

[Laughter].

EW (00:06:46):

What art medium do you prefer?

AW (00:06:49):

Oh, well, I mean, I guess again, I'll just go for the easy answer, which is graphic design. If it's considered an art medium, which is always a contentious thing. But I really like graphic styles, and I gravitate towards art that really has...a communicating function to it. Although I know a lot of people would really take me to task over whether graphic design is considered art or not, but I'll go with graphic design.

EW (00:07:20):

We consider it art.

CW (00:07:23):

This may be a dangerous question. Favorite astronaut.

AW (00:07:25):

Oh, okay. Well, it is a dangerous question, because I mean, I like all of them that I've met so far. But I would definitely pick Anousheh Ansari, first...private astronaut woman who went to the International Space Station, who was self-funded. Also, she sponsored the Ansari X Prize, which was the competition to build non-governmental suborbital space vehicles. She does a bunch of really awesome stuff.

AW (00:07:56):

Also, she came from Iran to the United States, and I also have some Iranian heritage. So she is awesome for those reasons, but also just genuinely as a person, she is amazing to talk to. And she's perhaps one of the best people to talk to about the human aspects, and the very human emotions, about what it's like to go into space.

EW (00:08:20):

Can you introduce us?

CW (00:08:23):

[Laughter].

AW (00:08:23):

[Laughter]. I can try.

EW (00:08:25):

Favorite fictional spaceship.

AW (00:08:28):

Fictional space - oh, gosh. That one's difficult. I don't think I've ever thought about ranking them.

EW (00:08:37):

You can go with least favorite if there's one that you're like, "Wow, that was a stinker."

AW (00:08:42):

I don't know. I don't know. I mean for now, I'll just go with Star Trek: The Next Generation. Yeah.

CW (00:08:53):

What's a tip you think everyone know?

AW (00:08:56):

On anything in the world?

EW (00:08:59):

Yep.

AW (00:08:59):

Oh gosh. Okay. I'll go with a tip that came from an astronaut, which is, if you go into space, make sure you go for longer than four days. Because the first four days, your face is really bloated because all the blood that is usually beneath your head is actually...equalizing throughout your whole body. So your face is super bloated.

AW (00:09:24):

They call it "moon face." It's really uncomfortable. And it's not until about four days later that your body figures out how to equalize it all, and you feel a lot more comfortable and a lot less gross. So I have been told the top tip for going into space is make sure you go for longer than four days.

EW (00:09:41):

Alright. I have other lightning round questions, but I have more questions about that. So let's just be done with lightning round.

AW (00:09:47):

Sure.

EW (00:09:47):

And you wrote a book called "What's It Like in Space?" And you got to talk to lots of astronauts. Who is the audience for that book?

AW (00:09:57):

Honestly, the audience, I know this is maybe not the best pitch for people, but...I really tried to make it for everyone, all ages, all genders, all everywhere and everyone. I really just thought it was something that, there's a lot of books about space. A lot of them talk about the seriousness of space, and it being this huge undertaking, which it is.

AW (00:10:25):

But I kind of thought that there should be a book that goes into the more amusing, and delightful, and very human aspects of space exploration, including the embarrassing ones. So I really just made it because I had come across all of these astronauts in my work, which was not something everyone gets to say.

AW (00:10:47):

And I would just keep coming home with all these really funny stories...from astronauts about what it was like in space, but they were the stories that maybe they might not say on stage. They were the stories that they might say over a cup of coffee or something.

EW (00:11:03):

Got to wonder what the stories are that you get over a couple of beers.

AW (00:11:07):

Exactly.

EW (00:11:09):

I enjoyed your book. I wish I had had it many years ago when I wrote an extraordinarily silly novel about space travel and wished that I'd had it for research, because one of my research points...that I found most fascinating was about snot.

CW (00:11:25):

Of course you did.

AW (00:11:25):

[Laughter].

EW (00:11:28):

And you sort of alluded to this in your tip everyone should know. Although it's good that if I ever get to go to space, I will definitely, yeah, four days. What happens to our mucus in zero-G?

AW (00:11:43):

Yeah. It essentially just stays there and doesn't leak out at all. So it just feels like you're always having a stuffy nose and you always have a cold, which also then means that your sense of taste is pretty muted as well. So yeah, it just floats around in there. It doesn't come out.

EW (00:12:03):

How did you manage to talk to the astronauts without squee'ing, being a fan girl, and just going, "Oh my God, oh my God."

AW (00:12:12):

I think sometimes I probably was being a fan girl. But I think that's okay. Some are busier than others, and some I had met in professional capacities. So...I was able to keep my cool, because I had to attend a meeting in addition to meeting them. But I think it just really is cool.

AW (00:12:36):

I think it's very humbling to talk to any of them, just because you know that there's only around 550 people who have ever been in space, and you know that pretty much everyone across the entire world wants to talk to them. So I try and keep it short, amidst my fangirling, is kind of how I went about it.

CW (00:12:56):

Did any of them try to play it cool? Like "Space, no big deal."

AW (00:12:59):

Some of them kind of were like that and others weren't. I think one of the reasons why I really appreciated interviewing Anousheh Ansari was because she wasn't a governmental astronaut. I think she was really detailed in being able to talk about embarrassing times and things.

AW (00:13:20):

One thing that I remember she told me, that I included in the book, was about how...she was going into space, she had trained, she went to the International Space Station, and when you're in microgravity, you need to zipper up your pockets all the time. Otherwise, whatever you put in your pockets will float out. And she put a bit of lip gloss in her pocket, and it accidentally floated out, and she couldn't find it anywhere.

AW (00:13:48):

And of course the worry when you're in space is anything floating might hit a button or might ruin something. You don't want a bunch of random stuff floating around in a space station. It could be dangerous. And so she looked everywhere for this lip gloss, couldn't find it, and she was so embarrassed.

AW (00:14:07):

She's like, "Oh my God, I'm in space. I've trained for this. And now I've probably ruined everything." And, "Oh my God, what is the main manager going to think of all of this." And she was just too embarrassed to say. And she was just like, "I've screwed everything up. I've totally ruined everything." And so she finally, after I think a couple days or something, 'fessed up.

AW (00:14:29):

And they were like, "Oh yeah, no big deal. There's a fan that sucks up all the stuff that's floating around. It's probably there. It acts like a lost and found." And she went, and it was there, and it was perfectly fine, no big deal. But I really appreciate stories like that because I feel like the stories of embarrassment are things that at least for me, I can relate to a lot.

AW (00:14:52):

I can really relate to going like, "Oh great, I'm in space and now I've totally messed something up. And everyone else here is doing everything right. And I'm the screwup" or something. So I really, I like those mundane but silly stories about space.

EW (00:15:11):

They make it approachable.

AW (00:15:13):

Yeah.

EW (00:15:14):

And it's nice to make science approachable.

AW (00:15:18):

Yeah. It's kind of a tragedy that it isn't more approachable, and it doesn't really make sense, because for me, I think, I would argue that humans have made it unapproachable. That it is approachable by design, but now we have to kind of dismantle a lot of the walls that people have put up around it over the last few decades.

EW (00:15:41):

Could you tell me more about that?

AW (00:15:43):

Yeah. I mean, science is something that really became properly a professional discipline over the 1900s and with that came a lot of benefits. We were able to make a lot of amazing discoveries, and peer review is able to make sure that the science that we take in, and listen to, and do, is proper and up to standards for the most part. Those are positive things.

AW (00:16:17):

The negative things are that science used to more center around amateurs, around people who were sort of either self-educated, or self-funded, for the privileged. And that had its own drawbacks in that a lot of the amateurs who were doing science were very privileged individuals typically.

AW (00:16:38):

But the concept of it being something where you didn't have to have a very specific and a very narrow background in order to make real contributions to it, I think is something that has gotten lost. And something that over the last, I would say 10 to 15 years, people have been trying to reclaim a bit with the term citizen science. I personally don't like the phrase citizen science.

AW (00:17:05):

I think there's a lot bundled into that that doesn't properly just treat science as science no matter who does it. But I think the concept of getting people from different disciplines and different backgrounds to contribute...to science, and really acknowledging their value as they exist, not their value if they drop everything and get a PhD in science, I think is really important. And something where science as a human endeavor has sort of lost its way.

AW (00:17:39):

I think right now we're in the stage where people are still talking about citizen science as being this kind of, I don't know how else to put it, but cute thing where, "Oh, people can make measurements for you and that's citizen science." It's frustrating. It's a step in the right direction, but we're still not yet at the era where people can be very self-directed, and that...citizen science breaks out from being a top-down sort of thing, which it is very much right now.

AW (00:18:12):

You see government agencies like the National Science Foundation, and other places, talk about valuing citizen science, but they still don't actually do the work in changing their systems to make it easier for individuals without academic affiliations to actually apply for grants. They don't make it easier for people to do self-directed work.

AW (00:18:32):

And so people like myself have to really navigate this kind of, figuratively with a machete, and start figuring out how to do the stuff that we want to do. Without it being constrained into a very neat and orderly little box, where we're only allowed to make measurements.

AW (00:18:53):

So there's a lot I can say about this subject, but I think...that sort of summarizes it for me, is we're needing to rebreak down the walls, but then also make it something that it's not just for the privileged few to do. And we need to really start moving, where people who want to contribute to science who come from non-traditional backgrounds have autonomy. They don't have to just do work within a very constrained set of parameters, but they can actually do self-directed work.

EW (00:19:31):

Okay. Let me see if I understand what you're saying, because I think there are several important points here. When we went from natural philosophers to scientists, they were often wealthy and privileged, and they were driven by curiosity and love of discovery. And now, as we talk about amateurs, they may still be privileged and funded, or may not be, given the access that many people in the world have.

EW (00:20:00):

They don't necessarily have to be doing full-time science through discovery and curiosity. Now they can contribute in other ways. Unfortunately, the ways that they're being forced to contribute are in the small, Mechanical Turk-ish, citizen science, could be done by a robot if only we invented that robot, sorts of ways.

AW (00:20:24):

Yeah. I would say that's a decent summary of it.

EW (00:20:28):

And so I think that's where your Spacehack.org comes in.

AW (00:20:33):

A little bit. I mean, Spacehack.org was something that I built 10 years ago, because I had learned about a lot of different opportunities in which people could contribute to the furthering of space exploration. They were both small endeavors, like making sort of Mechanical Turk-like measurements, and also larger ones, like figuring out how to build the next generation of Mars rovers that work nothing like any of the existing rovers do.

AW (00:20:59):

...I think I've certainly evolved more in the last 10 years since Space Hack. I think Space Hack really, as I was getting at, cracked into this first era of open science and citizen science, which is, there are cool opportunities to do different things. And if that thing is your jam, then go for it.

AW (00:21:22):

What Spacehack.org doesn't have as much, but has been successful, I think, in at least inspiring, has been sort of making people aware that there are ways to contribute to space exploration out there. And that for a lot of people, it might be a good entry point to go and try out one of these projects, whether it's searching for black holes, or building Mars rovers, what have you.

AW (00:21:51):

And I've had good feedback from people who have started there and then just started doing their own self-directed stuff. So Spacehack.org really was meant to be something that is successful in sort of getting people to go find something that delights them. And then they're just off on their own. Sort of just being that initial spark for people to realize that they're valuable to science as they exist today.

AW (00:22:18):

So I think Spacehack.org was the start. And then I think, what was it, a couple of years after doing Spacehack.org, then started Science Hack Day, which gets people to prototype all sorts of things and doesn't issue challenges. And doesn't keep people to tidy little boxes, but lets people be self-directed in their discovery and delight of things in science.

CW (00:22:44):

Funny, as I'm listening to this, I'm thinking about my own biases, and I have a pretty traditional science education. And as I went through that, it was piling history of science on top of history of science until you finally get to something near where we are in the contemporary state of physics or whatever. And that sort of credentialism is in the back of my mind.

CW (00:23:04):

Well, it's like, "What, you can't do anything unless you've gone through all this and built up all of this. There's so much physics. There's so much biology." But that's not really true. I mean, there is, but you can always say that there's too much for any one person to deal with.

CW (00:23:18):

So there's always places you can...make discoveries that are still out there that don't require you to have built up the last 2000 years of physics before you can understand it. And one of the examples I was thinking of was observational astronomy, where there's tons of people out there with telescopes, looking at binary stars, and comets, and discovering comets, and even discovering extrasolar planets and stuff...They're just doing that.

AW (00:23:48):

Yeah. I mean, for me, all of this is not about replacing people who have dedicated their lives towards the more what is now traditional sort of career and pathway into science. It's more about augmenting to me. So it's not about replacing, it's not about saying, "Oh, you don't need all of that to make these really big contributions" -

CW (00:24:14):

Right.

AW (00:24:14):

- or anything like that. It's more about that science needs help. That if you want to dedicate your life to becoming a scientist and a researcher, then you should definitely do that. But it's also that there's a lot of serendipitous and unexpected things that can help science, both from a process point of view, and from a discovery point of view, that I think science really has just shut themselves out of and sort of said, "Oh, we don't need any help. Yeah, you need this many years before we can even talk to you."

AW (00:24:50):

And that's the part that has just made me a bit sad because I've been witness over the last few years of many, many, many instances where scientists and researchers just end up realizing, "Oh, I do theoretical particle physics. I didn't think I could talk to anyone else about what I do because you need to know so much, but...learning design, or learning how to prototype stuff in electronics, or...learning from other people in different disciplines, I see now how that can benefit my work and how that can help."

AW (00:25:24):

And so it's not always about the big win of "I've discovered an entirely new black hole or planet in our galaxy" or anything like that. Sometimes it's just about process and about allowing more creative ways of doing things that sometimes can be really helpful. And I think a lot of scientists and researchers know this, but maybe haven't fully evaluated it. Because in science you're always looking to repurpose stuff for your own needs, because you need all this specialty equipment.

AW (00:26:00):

So a lot of times, you might be searching Amazon for something that's used for pets, but it's going to be really useful in your lab because it's exactly the right size that you need or the right weight that you need. So I witness all the time scientists and researchers having to be very creative and sort of have a hacker sort of angle to what they do, because it's so often requires specialty goods and materials.

AW (00:26:27):

And so I think it's just expanding it a bit to allow people from the tech era, tech scene, from the art scene, and from these different industries and disciplines to be able to have something to say and allow more creativity to be in science. So to me, I really see this as, yeah, science will only get better and have more unexpected sort of stuff in it that otherwise wouldn't exist if it stayed very narrowly focused on only people who have PhDs in a very specific discipline.

EW (00:27:03):

It's a hard balance though. I had lunch not too long ago with a friend that I haven't seen in a while, but we worked together for many years, and we are now, after 15 years of not working together, we are starting a new project. And there were so many things I didn't have to say because there was the common shared understanding of what we'd already done.

AW (00:27:28):

[Affirmative].

EW (00:27:30):

And that's a lot of getting a science degree and a PhD, is creating that thousands of years of building up so that you can build a shared language. And I guess from my perspective, which is I have a bachelor's degree, so I have decent science, but...I'm not a PhD. I don't know how to talk to them, and I get lost.

EW (00:28:01):

I've been studying robotics for years. I'm sure I could go back on the podcast and figure out when I fell in love with Patrick Pilarski's artificially intelligent prosthetic limb. But how do I? It seems like the gulf is really far. I see what you want to do, but I don't feel like I am qualified. And if I'm not qualified, how is anybody else who doesn't have a PhD?

AW (00:28:32):

Yeah, I mean, so first, you're talking about the comaraderie that comes with people having your shared knowledge. And that's definitely a thing because even me, now, being in the space sector for 10 years, I have that with other people,...where I don't have to worry about spelling out abbreviations or anything. Some basic stuff. That's not going anywhere. No one's taking that away from you.

AW (00:29:04):

But I think there needs to be some sort of acknowledgement of the fact that you're working on thousands or hundreds of years of built up knowledge in your sector. There are other people who have hundreds of years of knowledge in their sector, and wouldn't it be kind of sad to say, "Well, I'm not going to learn anything about the hundreds of years of what we know about design, and the effects that it has on people, and the effects that it has on the ability to get work done, because I want to stay in my vertical."

AW (00:29:39):

I understand that it can be difficult to talk to people in different verticals and different areas, but I think that's kind of what's needed. I think it's really sad to allow, I guess, the pressure that is put on researchers to stay sort of in their sector because of the comfort zone.

AW (00:30:07):

I think people do need to be thinking about, "Well, if it's a bit uncomfortable for me to talk to someone else, because I don't have all this shared stuff, and I don't even know where to begin with them, and where can we possibly go from here?" I think it's important to acknowledge that and to acknowledge that maybe that's kind of a problem.

AW (00:30:30):

Not that you need to be able to have everyone understand your hundreds of years of knowledge, just that they have their own hundreds of years of knowledge that you should tap into. And that maybe you're not going to understand everything about each other at the end of the day, but if you can get some insights from one another, then it's really useful.

AW (00:30:47):

And we see this happen between scientific disciplines all the time where it's like, "Oh my God, we are now using this technique from biology, but we're applying it towards robotics. And we're building soft robotics, because it's working based on stuff that we've learned about biology." Stuff like that happens all the time. Does it mean that the roboticist is really, really knowledgeable about everything about biology?

AW (00:31:13):

No, but they've got some little kernel that is actually going to really benefit their work. And also, I think it builds better connections to know that a roboticist could ask a biologist about how something works, and that there can be enough communication to really make a benefit on both sides.

AW (00:31:35):

So I don't think it's about figuring out how to embed your brain into someone else's brain, but it's about what can those kernels be, and knowing that you can ask people, and that it's okay. And that if they struggle a little bit to tell you how this all works, that's okay. It's okay to be a bit uncomfortable. But to not try means that we are kind of just giving up a whole ton of possibilities, that we'll never know what was possible, because we're not even trying.

EW (00:32:12):

Alright. I totally understand. And now that I understand that you are looking more for an interdisciplinary approach, and a more communicative, and appreciating the diversity of mind and knowledge that other people have. Yeah. Okay. I totally make sense. "I totally make sense." Phew, you know.

CW (00:32:34):

Sometimes.

EW (00:32:34):

Not then I didn't, but that totally makes sense to me.

AW (00:32:38):

[Laughter].

EW (00:32:38):

And so now I feel like we've really crossed over into Science Hack Day, because I think this is part of what it is.

AW (00:32:45):

Yeah.

EW (00:32:45):

Where you're getting these people in the same room, and then you're saying, "Okay, let's play."

AW (00:32:51):

Yeah. Yeah. It's totally that. And I have to say, scientists and researchers coming into Science Hack Day have been the most skeptical for sure. But a hundred percent across the board, once they've actually come to the weekend, and worked on prototyping things with people from different disciplines, they come out the other side and they're like, "I get it now. I get it. I get how this is beneficial both to me and my work, but also to other people."

AW (00:33:21):

And it's been really a heartwarming project. Perhaps I would say it's the most heartwarming project of all the work I've done over my many years now on Earth. Or my many short years, I guess, depending on which way you look at it. But yeah, so it's something where we leave it really open-ended. It's kind of like organized chaos in a good way.

AW (00:33:50):

It's something where people can decide what they want to do. So if you're coming in and you're saying, "I want to stick to my comfort zone, but I want to have a team of whoever's interested work on stuff in my comfort zone," you can do that. But you can also come in and be like, "I've always been fascinated by jellyfish, and I've never had the chance or permission to just do stuff with jellyfish, even though I know nothing about them."

AW (00:34:17):

It's that sort of safe playground where you can do these sorts of things. And I think pretty much across the board, everyone comes into it a bit uncertain, a bit of like, "I don't know what I have to contribute, or I don't know how I'm going to relate to anyone." And everyone comes out the other side having sort of created an experience that is life-changing either on a very minuscule scale, or life-changing on a large scale.

AW (00:34:48):

On the minuscule scale, it's that stuff that I was talking about, of just creating sort of a mental locket where you know that you can play around with stuff that you know nothing about, and that's okay. And that if you just did it for one weekend and you never do it again, but you know that it's always available to you, then that's the only change that I want to do.

AW (00:35:10):

Whether you're a scientist who wants to know that you could play around in another science discipline you've never touched, or you're someone with an art degree who wants to know that you can play around with space data, and that's something that's okay to do. So it's not necessarily about building expertise.

AW (00:35:29):

It's about building accessibility within everyone's individual brains so to speak. The knowledge that this stuff is available to you, and that it's okay to play around with things if you don't know why you're doing it, and if you don't know where it's going or any of that.

AW (00:35:53):

Unfortunately I think a lot of people need that permission to be able to feel like they can do stuff outside of where they exist. And I think just having that permission to do that...is enough of a change that if it happened on a large scale, I think all disciplines would be having a lot more creative approaches in them, and things that otherwise we might be giving up.

EW (00:36:23):

Yes, yes. But are there actually jellyfish?

AW (00:36:26):

We have had jellyfish biologists at Science Hack Day, for sure. I don't think we've had an actual jellyfish. We've had pig hearts. We've had weird things. We've had ants that were controlled through vibration. We've had some odd stuff for sure, but I don't think anyone's brought a jellyfish to Science Hack Day yet.

EW (00:36:50):

Maybe we should back up and actually say it's a weekend-long event.

AW (00:36:56):

Yes.

EW (00:36:56):

And there are some coming up. There is one in India in mid-October, one in San Francisco in late October, and one in France in late November.

AW (00:37:07):

Yes. And I believe there's perhaps one coming up in Colombia too that will be posted on the website shortly.

EW (00:37:16):

And so these are two or three day events. Do...people get invited? Do people just apply? Does it cost to attend? How does all of it work?

AW (00:37:28):

Yeah. So it's a entirely free to attend event. It's volunteer-run. It's something where we open up the registration for anyone to attend. You don't have to be, it's not an application process. Anyone can sign up to it. Some people do get invites just because in my experience, there's a lot of awesome people who we'd like to have at these events, and individual invites go a long way to telling people that we really care about having them there, and that they are valuable.

AW (00:38:03):

So it's kind of both an open registration, and we send out invites to people, and both ways are successful. So it's something where yeah, anyone attends, and what we try and do, on sort of the back end of everything, is just make sure that we've got a good balance between technologists, and art people, and scientists, and people from many other disciplines.

AW (00:38:31):

So as people sign up, we try and look at what general occupations people might be when they're registering. And if we're like, "Oh, we've got a lot of web developers and not enough artists" or something, then we'll tailor our outreach to target more artists. So the important thing with it is really just trying to make sure that we do have a good balance of people with different backgrounds at the event.

AW (00:39:02):

And from there, we open it up. So people come on a Saturday morning. We have lightning talks...And those lightning talks are about a bunch of different disciplines, just kind of open science stuff that people can play around with. So open data sets, or open visualization tools.

AW (00:39:22):

And really the lightning talks are just there to help people on a Saturday morning, because everyone's coming in a bit fuzzy-brained, and might need some things to react to to think about what they may or may not want to work on. But after the lightning talks, we really just encourage people to eavesdrop on each other's conversations, talk to each other. If it takes them several hours to figure out what they want to do, that's fine.

AW (00:39:48):

But really, for the Science Hack Days, we give them 24 consecutive hours to make anything they want that is related to science, and people come up with some pretty whackadoodle things. Some people work on some very serious problem-solving. It's really open to anyone, and people can be part of multiple teams. They can be a part of one team.

AW (00:40:12):

In a way, Science Hack Day is not only sort of breaking down barriers...between scientists and non-scientists, but it's also trying to change what hackathons had unfortunately become, because a lot of hackathons had become very competitive spaces where you need very technical skill sets.

AW (00:40:31):

And again, as being someone who's not from that discipline, I found that really frustrating, because I think a lot of people have the desire to want to figure out how to prototype something, even if they have no idea how to. And so Science Hack Day really tries to leave everything open-ended, so that you get all of these wonderful, unexpected collisions between people, and between ideas, and between different ways of prototyping things.

EW (00:40:55):

But you kept the 24-hour, the overnight from hackathons.

AW (00:41:02):

Yeah.

EW (00:41:02):

That's always been my kryptonite. I just, yeah, I'm sorry. I have to sleep. That's where all my ideas come from.

AW (00:41:08):

Yeah...yeah. And you can sleep. So you don't have to stay up...overnight. I think we kept the weekend event because humans, unfortunately, well, not unfortunately, humans, realistically, they have a set amount of time where they can get really excited about something and put a lot into it. And then they're like, "I am tired. I need to go to sleep."

AW (00:41:31):

So we keep the overnight part of it. Some people stay up all night. I would say the majority go home, and get sleep, and come back the next morning, and keep going. So that part is optional. You don't have to stay up all night working on something, but some people, that's how they work. And so leaving it open-ended so that multiple different pathways can be successful still, I think is the important part.

EW (00:41:57):

And you don't have prizes, but you do have sponsors.

AW (00:42:01):

Yeah. So we have sponsors who pay for all the food and help pay for different aspects of the event. But they don't pay for prizes. They don't get to shape the event...They provide the necessary venue and food and everything, but in terms of prizes, we still offer things like Best Design, Best Use of Data, stuff like that. But we award medals that say "Science" on them, and then we have a medal award ceremony, and it's just a lot of fun.

AW (00:42:34):

And I think by not having big prizes, it makes it a lot more collaborative. People tend to be less secretive. And it's really just about fun. And so even with the prize categories of these medals, we have some that are thought of beforehand, like, yeah, Best Hardware, Best Use of Data, stuff like that.

AW (00:42:52):

But each year we tell the judges to invent categories based on what they've seen. So it's really just kind of fun and on the fly. And we had one year, I think, where it was Best Whale Hack or something, because someone had made a really cool net with LEDs on it that would deter whales from getting tangled into it. And so, like the event itself, we try and keep that aspect pretty open-ended and broad.

EW (00:43:25):

And how do you find people to attend? How do you publicize events?

AW (00:43:32):

Yeah, a lot of it, so each city has their own organizers. So Science Hack Day isn't a franchise. It's not an organization. Anyone can organize a Science Hack Day in their city. There's instructions on the website for how to do that. And so each city, I think publicizes it a bit differently based on the knowledge of their own community.

AW (00:43:54):

In San Francisco, we've done it a lot by word of mouth. But I try and make it diverse by default, even though it's word of mouth, by recruiting people from different disciplines and areas into the organizing team. So for instance, the very first year that we did Science Hack Day...I did it a bit overkill. I had 15 people on the organizing committee, which was -

CW (00:44:23):

[Laughter]. That's a big committee.

AW (00:44:23):

- definitely, definitely too many. I learned my lesson from that. But one of the things I remember from that first year was, "Oh, there's a whole biotech scene in San Francisco, and we want to make sure that they come to the event." Well, the best thing we thought of to do that year was I just pretty much reached out to someone in biotech, someone that I didn't know previously.

AW (00:44:50):

And I just said, do you want to be part of the Science Hack Day organizing committee? And they agreed. And because of having that person who's already embedded in those communities on the organizing committee, it sort of meant that when we were doing word of mouth, that we were making sure to reach out into the biotech community as much as other things.

AW (00:45:08):

So again, it's not trying to sort of replace anyone, and say, "I can figure it out on my own." It's acknowledging, "Oh, okay. So I know people in these communities, what are the other communities in the local area that we want to make sure that we reach out to and not overlook?" And then recruiting your organizing committee based on that means that, I think, you have a lot more authentic word-of-mouth outreach, and you can do a better job of sort of breaking out of your own little echo chambers.

AW (00:45:41):

So I put a lot of effort at the start on the organizing committee, and the makeup of that organizing committee, and then kind of go from there. So that's one way. It's not the only way, but that's been a really important part, because otherwise you have a bunch of people who are like, "We know we need to reach out to these other communities, but we don't know anyone there. Well, let's just force it."...It doesn't usually work that way. You usually want people from the communities that you're speaking to to actually be involved in the process.

EW (00:46:14):

Very much so. That makes sense. So moving away from that, what is up next for you?

AW (00:46:23):

Yeah, so I have a couple of things happening this year. This year is my big exploration year, I would say. So in just about two weeks, I am going aboard the Exploration Vessel Nautilus to explore an underwater volcano that is an analog to Enceladus, the moon of Saturn. That is a icy moon that has ocean beneath the ice and has likely hydrothermal activity on it.

AW (00:46:52):

So we're going to be going to this underwater volcano to better understand the extreme forms of life that might live around it, so that we can better understand what extreme forms of life might live on Enceladus. The other expedition that I'm doing this year is, I am going to Antarctica for a month to do video microscopy of all of the extremophiles and extreme microorganisms that live beneath the ice in a number of different locations in Antarctica.

AW (00:47:21):

And actually trying to just get more video of how they interact, and what they look like, and how they move around, and just better understand kind of the microbial Serengeti, so to speak, that exists in Antarctica, and making people aware that there's actually a lot of life in this otherwise barren landscape.

CW (00:47:44):

Those are very connected.

AW (00:47:46):

Yes. Yeah.

CW (00:47:47):

One very cold and one very hot.

AW (00:47:49):

Yes. Yeah. But yeah, both of them are about astrobiology. So the sort of multidisciplinary discipline of understanding extreme forms of life here on Earth, so that we can better understand how life might exist elsewhere in our solar system, and in our galaxy, and in the universe generally.

EW (00:48:11):

And so your plan is video microscopy, so we'll be able to see little things battling it out, or eating each other, or whatever it is they do.

AW (00:48:21):

Yes.

EW (00:48:22):

Building tiny cities.

CW (00:48:25):

Twitching.

EW (00:48:25):

And then are you making a movie?

AW (00:48:30):

So I'll be taking a bunch of videos. All of the videos and photos that I take in Antarctica, I'm going to put under Creative Commons license. But...after I get back from Antarctica, I will be sort of stitching together all of these videos and putting it into an interactive website that's going to give people sort of the feeling of what it's like to actually just look down the barrel of a microscope while you're in Antarctica and the stuff that you can find.

AW (00:48:58):

So being able to just sort of pan around, and zoom in, and sort of get more of a sense of what all of these things are, and how they interact in their environments is kind of the goal.

CW (00:49:13):

Is this your first set of research expeditions, or is this old hat for you?

AW (00:49:17):

...These are my first. I hope they are the first of many. I hope to be doing much more. But yeah,...I've never been on a research vessel before. I've never been to Antarctica before. I do travel a lot, but it's not always science-driven. These two are both definitely science-driven. So I hope it's the first of hopefully a long career in doing more exploratory stuff like this.

EW (00:49:45):

I'm lost in thinking back to looking at the microbes, and I want it to be VR, and I want to be a microbe.

CW (00:49:55):

No you don't.

EW (00:49:55):

I want to play a game about being a microbe. I know that that's a game. I just, yeah. Sorry. You keep saying all these amazing things. And then I'm just like, "Jellyfish. I know she's still talking, and I'm not supposed to interrupt, but jellyfish."

AW (00:50:11):

Jellyfish are pretty badass. I mean,...when I was at MBARI, I was talking to Kakani, and I'm blanking on her last name, but Kakani [Katija], she is this amazing, kind of marine roboticist, is the way I'd almost describe her. She does all this amazing stuff about bio-inspired design. And she was talking about creating sort of jellyfish-inspired robots, which, of course, yeah.

EW (00:50:39):

Yeah.

AW (00:50:40):

I think everyone on this podcast right now would agree it is pretty freaking amazing to think about. So yeah, yeah. There's cool stuff with jellyfish, for sure. And if you're super fancy about it, they're just jellies. They're not jellyfish, but -

EW (00:50:58):

Ctenophores.

AW (00:50:59):

- they'll always be jellyfish to me. [Laughter].

EW (00:51:04):

Okay. One more area of things I want to ask you about. And that is N-I-A-C.

AW (00:51:11):

Yes, NIAC.

EW (00:51:12):

NIAC, which is?

AW (00:51:14):

NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts.

EW (00:51:17):

Which, I mean, that sounds like -

CW (00:51:19):

It's the warp drive people.

EW (00:51:20):

Yeah. The transporter people -

AW (00:51:22):

Ah, it's not the warp drive people.

CW (00:51:22):

Oh, not the warp drive people? Okay.

EW (00:51:22):

- the people who are doing advanced concepts for NASA. Wait, that was kind of in the name, wasn't it?

AW (00:51:31):

Yes.

EW (00:51:33):

Yeah. What is that? And what do you do for them?

AW (00:51:36):

Yeah. So NIAC is a program that funds futuristic, sci-fi-inspired, sometimes out there, ideas that could be transformative to future space missions, 20, 30, 40 years down the line. Things that maybe aren't possible yet today, but you could still do credible research into if they're viable or not.

AW (00:51:58):

And so it's this incredible program. The sort of things that they fund are things like using comets as propulsion systems, or using glitter in space telescopes. Weird stuff, stuff that definitely is straddling the out there stuff. They are not the warp drive people, because the warp drive stuff I think has been an entirely separate thing. Because they are looking at stuff from a credible perspective.

CW (00:52:24):

Gotcha.

AW (00:52:25):

So they have funded things that are looking into fusion-powered propulsion systems, which, fusion is still something that hasn't fully materialized yet. But you can still do a lot of credible stuff looking into it today. But yeah,...I think it's a really amazing program because anyone can apply. So you can be a garage hacker, you can be an academic, you can already work within NASA. It's open to any US citizens to apply.

AW (00:52:58):

If you're not a US citizen, as long as you partner with a US institution, you can also apply. And I think it's really great. And I think, this is my personal opinion, it's the most successful when it's pulling from people who maybe aren't directly in the space industry. So people who maybe are coming at it from a biological perspective, or a human physiology perspective, or something, and maybe working in the space industry is not their full-time job.

AW (00:53:33):

There's also very successful things that come from within NASA, because it's a great opportunity for people within NASA who have really great ideas, but might not have a boss who's very supportive of it, or might not have any funding mechanisms for their great idea to have sort of a home. So NIAC has an external council of people who advise it sort of from the outside.

AW (00:53:58):

These are sci-fi authors, and quantum physicists, and people of different disciplines. So I am one of the people on that external council, and we try to help NIAC maintain that delicate balance between science and science fiction. We don't want things that are too far into science fiction, and we don't want things that are too safe. So we try to keep the program balanced.

AW (00:54:22):

I don't get to actually review any of the proposals that come in, which is actually a positive thing because then I can encourage people to apply. And I don't have to worry about any conflicts there. But we try to sort of take a step back, and look at the overall program, and advise it on that basis.

AW (00:54:41):

So right now, the solicitation to apply to NIAC is open. And I think it closes in mid-September, and all that's needed to initially apply to NIAC is a three-page white paper. So it's a pretty incredible program. And I'm totally biased in saying this, but it's my favorite NASA program.

EW (00:55:02):

It can't be a three-page white paper about anything. There were specific areas, like there's some data from Cassini, tell us what you want to do with it. Or did I not understand?

AW (00:55:15):

No, no, there's not specific areas.

EW (00:55:17):

No?

AW (00:55:17):

Not for NIAC. It just needs to be within a mission context. So a lot of the important stuff that you get evaluated on is about it being in a mission context. And that can be a mission that is either currently being talked about, something like NASA going to Europa, or it can be just plausible.

AW (00:55:37):

So it can be stuff in cosmology. It can be stuff in human life support. It can be planetary stuff. So there's been funded concepts that are about orbiting Pluto. There have been ones about studying dark energy. So it can be really about anything as long as it seems that it's plausible that it could be a NASA mission. And this also includes aeronautics as well.

EW (00:56:07):

Alright then. Apparently I was looking at the wrong website, but I will have the right website in the show notes. So maybe other people will look.

AW (00:56:18):

Yeah. It should just be nasa.gov/niac.

EW (00:56:23):

Okay. Let's see. What is the future of human spaceflight? Why didn't we ask that in lightning round? That should have been a short answer, right?

AW (00:56:33):

Oh, okay. Well, yeah, it's a long answer. [Laughter]. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Where do you want me to begin with that?

EW (00:56:43):

Propulsion.

AW (00:56:45):

Oh, propulsion. Well,...propulsion is, I mean, so I'll back up and say, space exploration is something that is really interesting about the perception of it within people who really work on it as their full-time thing, and sort of people outside of that.

AW (00:57:05):

Because I think the tendency for a lot of people is to view space exploration as being this exponential thing, similar to what we've seen in parts of biology, where it's just every year, we're able to process more and do more. And it's just this exponential, through the roof sort of chart.

AW (00:57:23):

Space exploration, a lot of people perceive it to be that way, but it's really, really not. Space exploration, pretty much the model of it, is have a breakthrough, and then spend years and decades optimizing that breakthrough, but pretty much be at the same place until another breakthrough comes along.

AW (00:57:44):

And this is actually what NIAC is really around, is NIAC sort of understands that space exploration requires breakthroughs to be transformative. It's not an exponential thing. We're still using chemical rockets. And until another breakthrough comes along, and we get some other type of propulsion that really changes the game, then all we're doing, all that any innovative rocket company is doing, is just optimizing the hell out of chemical rockets.

AW (00:58:14):

And there are optimizations to have, like the fact that we're finally getting reusable rockets, and stuff like that. And that's cool, but...until a big breakthrough comes along, then we're more or less stuck with sort of the same state of stuff. So the future of human space flight is something where the report that I worked on looked at both present day technology and what we called foreseeable technology.

AW (00:58:43):

So things that don't exist, but it's pretty foreseeable in our current state of everything to imagine people figuring out. So an example is landing humans on the surface of Mars. Right now, no one has built whatever it is going to be that safely lands humans on the surface of Mars. We can't use any of the stuff that we've been using to land robots on Mars, because that would kill squishy humans.

AW (00:59:07):

We have to invent new stuff. That doesn't exist right now. No one's built it. But it's within the realm of foreseeable technology. We felt that stuff like that, it doesn't exist, but it can probably be done. It most likely can be done.

AW (00:59:23):

But at the start of the report, we pretty much acknowledged that because space exploration depends on breakthroughs, that if a huge breakthrough in technology happened, if we got fusion-powered rockets, or something like that, then it rewrites the whole game.

AW (00:59:41):

And that's kind of how space has worked from the get-go is, something comes along, oftentimes from a completely different sector, and it just completely changes the game. Ballistic missiles changed the game. And so that's kind of how space works.

AW (01:00:00):

And so, the report about the future of human space flight looked, as much as we could, at present day and foreseeable technologies and evaluated it based off of those, but we also acknowledged that breakthroughs can and do happen. They don't seem to happen that often, but when they do, it rewrites everything.

EW (01:00:20):

Yeah. Okay. Well, Christopher, do you have any questions you want to ask Ariel?

CW (01:00:25):

We could talk for a few more hours?

EW (01:00:28):

Yeah. I know. That's the problem.

CW (01:00:32):

We should probably let her go.

EW (01:00:32):

Maybe you'll come back and tell us about microbes.

AW (01:00:37):

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Once I get back from my two expeditions, I imagine I'll have a lot more insights to share about them.

EW (01:00:45):

And advice for being on large boats for long times.

AW (01:00:48):

Oh my God. Yeah. I just tried my prescription motion sickness patch. So...I'm preparing for that experience.

EW (01:00:58):

It'll be so cool. Ariel, do you have any thoughts you'd like to leave us with?

AW (01:01:04):

I mean, not anything in particular, we've covered a lot of ground. I always have more to share. I think, just that you can follow along on my expeditions to Nautilus and Antarctica on my Patreon page. And also I have a YouTube channel, where I will be trying to share as much as I can from those expeditions and everything. So that's probably going to be the two places you can easily find me.

EW (01:01:36):

Alright. I'll make sure those are in the show notes. Our guest has been Ariel Waldman, co-author of a congressionally-requested National Academy of Sciences report on the future of human spaceflight. She's the author of the book, "What's It Like in Space?: Stories from Astronauts Who've Been There."

EW (01:01:53):

And Ariel sits on the council for the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts, something? Advanced Conce -

AW (01:02:02):

Program.

EW (01:02:04):

Program, program. She is, finally, the director of Science Hack Day. She's got a lot more titles. Clearly we could have gone on for a lot longer, but thank you for being with us, Ariel.

AW (01:02:17):

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. This was fun.

EW (01:02:19):

Check out the show notes in your podcast app, or on https://embedded.fm. Put a colon in there too somewhere. I don't know. Thank you to Christopher for producing and co-hosting. And of course, thank you for listening. You can always contact us directly at show@embedded.fm or hit the contact link on that embedded.fm.

EW (01:02:44):

Finally, from me, a quote to leave you with. One of my favorite scientists, Marie Curie. "Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."

EW (01:03:03):

Embedded is an independently produced radio show that focuses on the many aspects of engineering. It is a production of Logical Elegance, an embedded software consulting company in California. If there are advertisements in the show, we did not put them there, and do not receive money from them. At this time, our sponsors are Logical Elegance and listeners like you.