If you’re fascinated by the idea of humans traveling through space and curious about how that all works, you’ve come to the right place.

“Houston We Have a Podcast” is the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center from Houston, Texas, home for NASA’s astronauts and Mission Control Center. Listen to the brightest minds of America’s space agency – astronauts, engineers, scientists and program leaders – discuss exciting topics in engineering, science and technology, sharing their personal stories and expertise on every aspect of human spaceflight. Learn more about how the work being done will help send humans forward to the Moon and on to Mars in the Artemis program.

On Episode 200, Dan Huot, public affairs officer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, shares his experiences working on the first episodes of Houston We Have a Podcast, his work at NASA, and broadcasting the first humans to launch from American soil since 2011. This episode was recorded live on June 8, 2021. Click here to watch!

Transcript

Gary Jordan (Host): Houston, we have a podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center, Episode 200. Wow, I can’t believe I’m saying that. It’s been almost four years since we started the podcast, and it’s been an absolute privilege to bring in the coolest guests in the coolest places. We’ve had scientists, engineers, and astronauts, in space and on the ground. We’ve had authors, historians, program leaders, military leaders, filmmakers. We hosted panels, we did some live stage shows, televised shows, conferences, we joined up with other podcasts. And I think most of all, in each of these instances, we got to sit down and dive deep into unique and interesting topics. So, we had to do something special for the 200th episode of Houston We Have a Podcast. I sat down with the team, and we thought it would be fun to bring back Dan Huot, (NASA) public affairs officer, from Episode 1. He also hosted a few episodes of this podcast. Since we last had Dan on, he sort of led the charge, in part, for constructing the new layout for what you see on NASA TV for the Commercial Crew missions, the latest of which include the SpaceX crewed missions and the award winning SpaceX Demo-1 broadcast, the uncrewed mission. We streamed the recording live to Facebook so we can discuss some of his work to make that happen, we took some questions live, had some polls, and we talked about the podcast, too. So, in case you missed it, here’s the 200th episode of Houston We Have a Podcast. Enjoy.

[ Music]

Host: Hey, everyone. Thanks for joining us for a live episode of Houston We Have a Podcast; I’m NASA’s Gary Jordan. We’re getting together in front of the cameras, this time to record this episode live, because it is our 200th episode of Houston We Have a Podcast. So, we thought we’d do something special, we’re going to make this interactive, we’re going to take some questions. We were looking for some special guests to get on our show. None of them were available, so we do have Dan Huot here as our special guest today. Dan, thanks for joining.

Dan Huot: Yeah. Like I said, it’s always great to be at the bottom of the barrel. So, thanks for letting me back in, Gary.

Host: We actually did really want you to, to come on this show, because you kicked us off with Episode 1. And today’s episode theme is going to be talking about what you have been doing since, you’ve been doing a lot of work with NASA TV and building up the mission coverage for Commercial Crew. So, we’re going to learn a little bit about that. We’ll talk about the podcast, and of course we’ll be answering your questions live. Just comment right below on the Facebook Live stream. So, let’s get right into it, Dan: the first question I have is last time we had you on the show as a guest was four years ago. You were the International Space Station public affairs officer. What have you been up to since?

Dan Huot: It’s funny. I mean, we recorded Episode 1 like ten feet over there —

Host:Yeah.

Dan Huot: — just sitting at a table thinking, hey, let’s try it. If it sounds terrible, we just won’t put it out, but here we are, 200 episodes later.

Host: That’s right.

Dan Huot: You know, you and the whole team, wow.

Host: Thanks.

Dan Huot: But yeah, back then, I was the PAO, or the public affairs officer, for space station and still do a lot of work with space station but it’s expanded. I work, I get to work with you, every day now, on everything space station. We have Leah Cheshier; people who watch NASA TV, you’ve definitely seen her. And we cover kind of everything happening here at JSC with space station and Commercial Crew. The Commercial Crew Program, if you followed human spaceflight at all, you’re very aware of it. Over the last couple of years, we’ve been working and just last year, started flying humans from America again for the first time since the end of the shuttle. So, really just diving in headfirst into all of that. I mean, it’s a big team at NASA that works on that, here in Houston, teams in Florida, people up at NASA Headquarters in Washington, but that’s pretty much eaten my lunch for the last couple of years.

Host: Well, that’s really what I want to get into, is describing all that work that you’ve been doing, really, NASA TV, if you’re looking at the mission coverage, it looks very different from how we’ve done it historically. But I want to start there. I want to start with understanding just how we’ve done in the past and how it is different. So, take us through what NASA TV and our mission coverage used to look like.

Dan Huot: Yeah and that, I mean NASA TV has been around forever, essentially. Every NASA mission, we have covered live in some manner for the public. And I mean, I showed up at the very end of shuttle, and by that point they had been flying shuttle for about 30 years. It was a pretty well-oiled machine. You got wall-to-wall coverage for weeks at a time during shuttle missions. So, it was definitely, pretty exhaustive for trying to just cover every moment of a mission. But it was, I mean, you were in the very early stages of high definition television at that point, really becoming widespread, and social media was still pretty fledgling, so that wasn’t a huge part of the live coverage yet. And I mean, just think about all of the ways, in the last ten years, we’ve developed just to talk to people. And it’s been, how can we try to work that into every kind of facet of covering human spaceflight? And that’s what we’ve been doing just gradually over the years, because, I mean, we’re still covering the space station, people are still flying 24 hours a day so we still have a job to do to cover that, but transitioning from shuttle, which we ended up taking a lot of those lessons, in terms of, you know, how did we cover it when people were launching from here, just because, I mean, for us in the U.S., we know there’s always going to be more interest when they’re launching from Florida.

Host: Yeah.

Dan Huot: And so, it was just getting ready for kind of that crush of attention that you hadn’t really had, except for a couple of moments, since the end of the shuttle program.

Host: Did — so, I came into NASA after shuttle. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see a shuttle launch, I didn’t get to work a shuttle mission. For those that got to do it, what was that like? What were, you know, if you were doing commentary, if you were working a broadcast, what was it like?

Dan Huot: Yeah. I — as I said, I came in at the very end.

Host: Yeah.

Dan Huot: I started, I was a student like you and did the, did the internship. And then I started full time the month before the final shuttle mission launched. So, I got to see some of what they were doing, and it would be, you know, wall-to-wall coverage with a bunch of kind of the traditional, at the desk briefings built in as well. And then you’re doing press releases and stuff like that. But in terms of just like the television coverage, it would start a couple of hours before launch, you would have a team at Kennedy [Space Center] covering everything and pretty much just one person here in Houston, who would then be ready to provide what we call the ascent coverage, so after it launches. And you would usually only have one or two people at Kennedy providing all of that, kind of that pre-launch countdown and everything. And there were a couple of beats that you would always try to show, which really helped guide what we ended up doing with Commercial Crew, where you get to see the crew suit up, you know, the iconic getting in the orange suits in those big leather chairs, walking to the elevator, coming out of the doors, that stuff that, you know, people if you thought about, you know, humans launching from Florida, those are the images that usually popped into your mind, aside from the smoke and fire. And so that, that was all covered during shuttle, and then they would lift off, and then, you would be 24 hours a day for the duration of the mission. So, you would have, at least for us in Houston, you would have one person go into mission control, and they’d be on about an eight to eight-and-a-half-hour shift, where you’re just providing coverage the whole time. And so, for two of those shifts the crew’s awake, one the crew’s asleep. So you could do things like interview flight controllers, play back highlights, things like that, which, again, that helped to kind of really guide us, what we ended up doing for Commercial Crew. We were able to pick out all the stuff that worked really, really well for shuttle, and then build it into all the stuff we ended up doing anyways.

Host: So, you got to sit in with some of those broadcasts then, right? You get to kind of understand and pull into some of the knowledge of what we used to do.

Dan Huot: Yeah. I got to, as a student, I got to sit in a couple of times. There — our office is pretty good about, especially when you’re a student, getting you in there to kind of see what it’s like, to kind of soak up that information. And it was cool to sit with, I mean, the people that were doing it at that point, I mean, you had, everybody knows Rob Navias. He was the ascent commentator for [STS-]135. But then, I mean, you had people in our office who had been doing that for years. Our friend, Josh [Byerly], you remember him, I got to sit in with him a couple of times, got to sit in for like a spacewalk, and it was just really cool. And you, that was the first time I kind of got exposed to just how much you have to know to do that job, to the point where, I mean, Rob could probably still quote a page number in a shuttle reference manual or something, if I asked him a question about it, like the, just the level of knowledge you had to just acquire, and either know off the cuff or know exactly where to find it, just to be that person who’s kind of guiding the, what the heck is happening right now. So, that was really cool, and that was definitely eye opening.

Host: All right. Well, I want to get into how you pulled all of that knowledge and turned it into what we’re seeing for Commercial Crew today, but I do want to make sure we are doing an interactive broadcast. We’re getting questions coming in, and we have Chelsey [Ballarte] over here, that’s filtering some of these questions, so thanks to Chelsey. I got this first question from Calvin. Calvin is asking, what happened to the “Space Station Live” program for NASA TV? Now, this was a program we used to do. This was even post-shuttle. We used to continue it on. So, what was that program, and what happened to them?

Dan Huot: Yeah, we used to do that for, for the space station, and we did it, even when the shuttle was flying, and we did it afterwards. We used to, so, five days a week, we would do an hour-long show, eventually down to 30 minutes. But when I showed up, it was an hour-long show, where you basically do a live update of everything happening on the station. So, we would do it at a point when the crew was awake, and you’d replay any video from earlier in the day and show kind of the live stuff that’s happening, and then you could interview people and things like that. It was great on days when there was a lot happening. Then, I mean, we would still do it five days a week. So, the crew would have an off day, or the crew wouldn’t have much going on—you would have no video, and the show was a little bit less interesting, to say the least. So, it was a lot of fun. It was a great teaching tool, especially for new people, like the first time I was ever doing the NASA commentary; I think you, too.

Host: That’s how I learned. Yeah, it was on “Space Station Live.” Yeah.

Dan Huot: That’s how we learned. It was definitely a much kind of lower-risk learning than, you know, your first commentary when somebody is doing a spacewalk or something. And when I go back and listen to my early episodes, I — and I was so bad. I was so bad.

Host: Me too. [Laughter]

Dan Huot: So, it was good that I was, you know, it was kind of a lower-risk environment. But I mean, as anybody that’s done live TV knows, TV productions are really resource-intensive. And as the years went by, we realized more and more people were just consuming things on demand, and at the same time so it fulfilled a need to show people video from the space station and also, just tell people what’s happening. Well, thanks to social media and just the prevalence of all the different tools we have to communicate with people, you can do that just via a blog update and put out a tweet, put out a short post somewhere, and then I don’t need a 30 minute TV program just to get that kind of information out. And there are so many platforms for sharing video now, we just had kind of more effective ways to get that out there to people than just, just a terrestrial television station. So, we transitioned away from doing “Space Station Live.” It definitely had some, some really great quality to it but we just kind of made the call to go in another direction.

Host: Yeah, yeah. It’s a more modern approach now. People are consuming more bite-sized chunks and everything. This was a really good question, Calvin, thanks for submitting; and if you want to ask more questions, keep them coming. I’m going to be reading them throughout today’s broadcast. I also wanted to try something. It’s a poll feature on Facebook Live. We’re going to see if it works. If not, just please comment below. But I wanted to throw in some polls for the podcast itself, since we both started with the podcast. So, this first question is, “what kind of Houston We Have a Podcast episode do you prefer?” So, this is one of them, right, we’re on TV, we do a live broadcast. It’s very similar, I think, to how we do the normal Houston We Have a Podcast episodes, sit down interview. This one’s about a particular topic, which is mission coverage, but we do all kinds of topics. Do you like those? Do you like our normal interview shows? We’ve done panels. So, you’ve gotten to sit with Gates McFadden, at Comicpalooza, we did those live panels. I did a stage show with another podcast – “Writing Excuses” was the podcast I did it with. And then we’ve done some narrative types. So, of those polls, or of those different types of shows, which one do you like? Go ahead and put it in the poll feature. It seems like it’s actually working.

Dan Huot: Yeah, I know, I mean, on this side of it, the panel was a lot of fun. It was cool to have like the crowd reaction and everything —

Host: Yeah, live feedback.

Dan Huot: — because normally it’s just, you know, us sitting in a room really quiet, so we don’t make Alex [Perryman] mad with bad noise. So, that was really cool. And then the narrative, I think, the, the entire thing that Pat [Ryan] did over the Apollo anniversaries and everything was just, it was fascinating. And it really does give you an opportunity for just really dense content, to just give it the time it deserves to like breathe. I really liked that.

Host: “Heroes Behind the Heroes” was that episode, and it was about restoring this obsolete piece of hardware that had the ability to pull back some taped audio, and then we were able to digitize it, because it was that whole process of recovering this piece of hardware. Super interesting story, it’s a four-part series. So, yeah, is that one of the things you like, or do you like some of the other stuff, or maybe a combination of each of these? All right. Getting back into the mission coverage stuff. So, we were talking a little bit about the historic part of things, how we used to do the coverage, then you get the assignment: hey, Dan, we want to do something grandiose for this new era in human spaceflight; we’re going to be working together with commercial companies. How do you first start approaching it?

Dan Huot: Yeah, and I want to make it abundantly clear this was not just Dan doing this. This was the work of so many people. So, I obviously need to say that. But our initial thought when we were going in is, we knew it had to be a little bit different. Well, we knew it had to be more than a little bit different, it had to be different. For shuttle, you’re talking, it was a NASA spacecraft, NASA astronauts, along with international partners and a couple of others, especially when we were flying to the space station, but it was very much a NASA thing. We — you would find other people to bring in sometimes, but I mean, this was the NASA show. When it came to Commercial Crew, we now know we were going to be working with two companies, SpaceX and Boeing, that, they own the hardware, they’re flying the missions, we’re essentially giving them our astronauts to bring to the space station and come home. So, obviously, they have a humongous piece in that. And they have their own identities as companies, they have their own priorities, and so we knew that anything that we were going to do, it had to be together. We never wanted it to be, here’s the NASA Show and Here’s the SpaceX show, or here’s the NASA show and here’s the Boeing Show. We wanted it to be here’s the human spaceflight show. And so, it was a lot of work in the initial years, which we had a couple of years where we knew this was, at least this is what we wanted to try and do. And Boeing and SpaceX were pretty much of the exact same mind. So, that made everything a whole lot easier, just with everybody with that same goal. We all — everybody’s inevitably going to have different ways to get to that goal, but knowing that we have the same ultimate goal, that like right there was like, oh, all right, we’re good, we’re good. So, we knew that it was going to be joint. We knew that you were going to have different locations involved, even between the different providers. You have a couple of common ones, like both are launching from Kennedy, different pads, different facilities to actually launch, but we have some pretty established stuff down at KSC, the Kennedy Space Center, so we knew we were going to be able to use that. They’re both going to the International Space Station, so we knew that we were going to be using mission control here in Houston. But then, you have the kind of the, one of the main separators is SpaceX controlling Dragon, everything from Hawthorne in California, and then Boeing controlling for one of the control rooms here in Houston. So, that was something a little bit more, we had already done, we knew how to do; the SpaceX one was just a wholly new — how the heck are we going to integrate all of these different places together? I mean, so that was a challenge, but it was a fun challenge. And again, it wasn’t really difficult to get everybody on board. That is what we wanted to go do. So, you got to spend way more time just solving like the technical problems and things like that, which you had all those different locations, and then, we’ll get into this, but then you had the added luxury of trying to figure out how the heck are we going to get signals from all of these different landing zones?

Host: Yeah.

Dan Huot: You have drastically different return profiles: one splashes down in the ocean, one’s in the middle of one of several deserts. How the heck are we going to show people that? Because, you know, we’re going to want to see it, and we found some really, kind of creative ways to be able to get views back. So, it’s been fun.

Host: It’s been fun, but it sounds like it’s a mix of challenges. You have the piece of working with, not just NASA—as you said before, it was NASA telling NASA’s story, you know, we’re going to do our thing—now you have to get other priorities in there. And then there’s this whole technical challenge. We want to tell the story from front to end. We want to pull in all of these different locations, literally two opposite ends of the United States, put them together, including the ocean. Now, we’re in the ocean, too, the desert, we’re in all these different interesting areas. So, it’s a combination of these diplomatic challenges and the technical challenges.

Dan Huot: Yeah. And I mean, you, I always had more fun with the technical stuff, just because trying to figure out how to get a signal from, you know, the middle of the ocean, in the middle of a desert, like that was, that was really cool. And again, that’s something that technology, especially over the last couple of years, has really helped with, where, I mean, you have, instead of having to, like, rent a massive satellite dish and drive it into the desert, we have a pretty small pop-up one, that the Boeing team has, that we’re able to get a signal from literally the middle of nowhere, because that’s where you want to try and land your spacecraft. And I just love what we’ve been able to do with the Boeing return stuff. That’s probably my favorite, like, aspect —

Host: Going out in the desert? Yeah.

Dan Huot: — the mission is like going out in the desert and doing those. Like it’s really cool. It’s really fun to develop. We did a lot of work, you know, prior to ever flying, where you go out to the desert, you kind of rehearse landing and everything. There was almost like a “Mad Max” vibe to it, where everybody was lined up in a giant convoy, and everyone’s wearing big goggles and everything, because it was 110 degrees out and the Sun was trying to destroy you, but it was just so much fun.

Host: Didn’t you go out when it was cold too? Wasn’t it like super cold in the morning?

Dan Huot: Yeah. OFT’s (Orbital Flight Test) landing was at White Sands…

Host: Yeah.

Dan Huot:…and it’s a desert, so daytime usually a little warm; nighttime, really cold.

Host: Yeah.

Dan Huot: It was a nighttime landing, and we’ve gone to really cold places in this job. We’ve been to Kazakhstan when it’s, you know, snowing and everything. For whatever reason that was like the coldest I’ve ever felt. Like my feet hurt the entire time. But everything worked, the equipment was awesome, we were able to do some kind of reporter in the car, in the chase vehicle, heading to the landing site. I remember standing outside and everybody’s freezing, but you kind of saw the capsule coming down under the parachutes and just a very, like, silhouette backdropped against the night sky. And, you know, just this roar went up of just, “Let’s go!” like, just, everybody just so excited. Like it was phenomenal, and we’re able to talk to some of the team members live on TV. And then we got out to the landing zone, and we were able to, you know, show the entire recovery, talk to some of the astronauts that were there; Suni Williams named the spacecraft while we were out there. And it’s just, we’re able to bring people in closer to a mission that I think we’ve ever been able to before.

Host: Yeah.

Dan Huot: And that’s what’s really exciting about it.

Host: Well, I think people are really excited about this, because I’m seeing a lot of questions coming in. So, this one from George from Ukraine is asking about the collaboration specifically between how NASA works with NASA TV and then SpaceX. Well, I mean, historically, I know we used to do like different broadcasts and everything. So, how is that collaboration?

Dan Huot: And that, I mean, that’s something that evolved over time, too. Anybody that follows SpaceX, actually know that they do their, their own webcasts. And they had a very different style, a very different approach than what NASA did. And so, it was fun to work with them, understand what works really well for them, share what works really well for us, and come out with I really do think was the best of both worlds with what we ended up doing with these broadcasts. Our work with SpaceX, it’s the exact same with our work with Boeing, where it’s literally, you’re side by side in pretty much every single decision that gets made about how to do these shows. The SpaceX team is incredible, in both their technical prowess and just their ability to make stuff look really compelling, look really good. And we get to do pretty much all that with Boeing, too. So, like, it’s a great place to be in.

Host: Yeah.

Dan Huot: They’re both and I think I already said this, with both of these companies you’re working with people who are just giant space nerds, who are just, who live and breathe it every single day. And so, it’s really easy to then work on a giant space nerd show for people, when you have all of that common ground between you.

Host: Exactly. We got another one. This is a technical question from Eric, who’s asking, how do you address time delays in the signals coming from multiple locations?

Dan Huot: That’s, that’s a good question, because it varies, kind of depending on where you are. Luckily, most of your locations are pretty non-delayed, for the most part. We don’t do, we try to do as little kind of point to point to point jumping as possible. And one of the things that we usually focus on is, you know, whoever’s actually kind of switching and punching the final broadcast, that’s where all your sources are. So, you’re not, you don’t have like six links in the chain to either add delay or complexity or the risk of losing a feed. So, we don’t really have many delays. NASA TV’s not on a delay. And so, you’re pretty much seeing everything that we’re showing you. You’re seeing it the real time that we’re seeing it.

Host: Yeah.

Dan Huot: So, that’s going to change, though. When you start going to the Moon, you’ll have a little bit more delay. And then, I don’t know how the heck we’re going to do anything for Mars with that delay –

Host: Right.

Dan Huot: — when the people are there. That’s going to be a really fun problem to try and address. We’re not quite there yet. We’ll think, we’ll think about that in, you know, a little while.

Host: We’ve got some time.

Dan Huot: Yeah, we got some time.

Host: Good. Good. Yeah. These questions that are coming in are awesome. I wanted to pause and do another poll though, because it seems that, that function is working. So, I’m going to jump back to the poll about Houston We Have a Podcast. How often do you listen to a podcast episode? We come out every Friday. So, are you a person that listens once a week? Every Friday, you listen to it? Do you listen every so often? Do you only listen to episodes that sound pretty interesting to you? So, if you see an episode topic, you’re like, I want to do that one, or do you want more? Do you want less? We’ll put up a poll, and you can answer one of those questions. I see some more questions coming in. Leah Cheshier, that name sounds pretty unfamiliar.

Dan Huot: That name sounds, I feel like I heard that before.

Host: Yeah. I lost it. But she’s asking, who is your favorite podcast guest, which I think is an unfair question, because I’ve had so many different guests. I’ve had historians, I’ve had filmmakers, astronauts, engineers, scientists, program [managers]; I’ve had a bunch of different people. I always pick on, though. Jennifer Ross-Nazzal, who is our local historian. I really enjoy working with her. She’s been on the podcast a couple of times, and she’s, she comes in super-prepared. We did one for the Apollo anniversary, Apollo 11 anniversary, and she put together all these different stories. I wanted to talk about some of the lesser-known things, so, she put a collection, she literally did a bunch of research, put a collection of the lesser-known stories of Apollo, that were happening around Apollo 11, and that’s, it ended up being the episode that we put out. One of my favorites, to this day. And actually, it’s one of our more popular episodes. Dan, I don’t know if you have a favorite guest?

Dan Huot: I’m like sitting here, typing furiously, trying to remember his name. I think it was Scott Smith, but it was, it was one of our nutritionists. And he talked about —

Host: The nutrition, yeah.

Dan Huot: — just some of the different links between nutrition and just the crazy chaos that that can play with your body, that you don’t even think about. I mean, everybody obviously, you have to eat well here on Earth to expect to be healthy all the time. But when you go into microgravity, and you get the added stresses of your body adapting to all of that, just how much bigger of a role that that plays. It was really like eye-opening, to listen to all that, so that one was really cool.

Host: I really enjoyed that one, too. We got another one from Erin Anthony, another name we definitely don’t recognize, who’s asking, what stories we hope to tell in the next 200 episodes. I really do hope to keep this one going. One of the things I’m really looking forward to is telling, is talking more about Artemis.

Dan Huot: Big time.

Host: But when we start doing Moon missions, we’re going to start really, having a better understanding of how all these different pieces come together. And I cannot wait to do deep dives into each and every one of those intricate pieces of a Moon mission. I think that’s going to be so exciting.

Dan Huot: Yeah, I’m, exact same page.

Host:Yeah.

Dan Huot: Like everything Artemis, over the next couple of years is just going to get cooler and cooler. And we’re fortunate that a bunch of it is here at JSC.

Host: Yeah.

Dan Huot: I mean, I, just, on another project, got to meet the teams that are designing the tools for the Moon missions, and they’re already testing them in our fake moon yard over, over here on-site. And just knowing that that work’s happening right now, it makes it all feel that much more real. And so, I can’t wait until we’re really doing, you know, like you said, the deep dives into it, because any — a lot of space stuff is cool; it gets ratcheted up when it’s being done on the Moon.

Host: Yeah, absolutely. This is so awesome. I want to jump back into our Commercial Crew topics, though. So, you were talking about the, you were talking about preparing. So, let’s talk about now what it looks like. So, we’ve done it: you did all the planning, you got everyone together. You got all the technical stuff, all the bugs fixed. We are ready to go. If you’re tuning in to some of our coverage, what can you see, all the way leading through, you know, that moment of smoke and fire?

Dan Huot: Yeah, I was going to say we still haven’t fixed all the bugs. We’re actively fixing bugs even as you’re watching stuff. So, that never ends. It’s, we’ve been able to do a couple of missions now. We’ve had three crew launches within the last year, which is wild to think about. The — I mean, the DM (Demonstration Mission)-2 last year feels like ten years ago, but I think we all aged a lot in 2020. But I mean, nowadays, it — we’re getting to kind of a pretty nice cadence where we’re never going to stop tweaking and changing things, just as you kind of find things that work well or things that don’t.

Host: Yeah.

Dan Huot: But we’re in a pretty good rhythm now. You’re going to see, you’re going to see a lot of the crew, in the couple of months before we, we lose access to the crew. Very understandably, they have to, you know, do their final preparation for space, so they don’t always have time to talk to us. And so, we have to kind of find time with them, where we can really help people kind of get to know them. And you and the team do a great job of putting together like interviews with them and everything. And then we always try to do kind of a final, call it a crew news conference. It’s typically about a month before they actually launch. And I mean, this is a clip from when we did the Crew-2 astronauts.

Host: Yeah.

Dan Huot: And this, this one was, it looks like this because in addition to kind of evolving with all the new technology, we had to do all of these first crewed missions in the midst of the pandemic.

Host: Right.

Dan Huot: So, you had to rethink how you were doing these opportunities. So, I mean, this — it’s literally them in four different offices in our building next door. So, we could have them kind of all like on camera, make sure we weren’t violating mask mandates or anything like that. But we, we try to get every opportunity possible to get people to know the crew, because they always say they’re the tip of the spear, but these are always incredibly interesting, incredibly talented people. So, any opportunity we can get, to help people know them. And then we do kind of the typical, the NASA, where you’re doing news conferences with managers, giving people overviews of the mission. And we produce a lot of like the on-demand video content to help explain things. And you have a huge web presence. But you do a lot. And then, I mean, the months before, it’s, it’s basically outlining what a show is going to look like. You get a basic show outline, you divvy up who’s going to be covering what, everybody’s got, your kind of different jobs. For us, who are in kind of the more operational commentary role, it’s a lot of studying, it’s a lot of going to sims (simulations) with flight control teams.

Host: Yep.

Dan Huot: So, you know, if anything bad ever happens, you’re prepared for it, you know what’s actually happening. That part’s been probably my favorite –

Host: Learning.

Dan Huot: — because we’ve gotten a chance to basically learn brand new spacecraft. And along the way, you get a little bit smarter about just general space operations. But the learning about brand new spaceships, like that, that’s really cool.

Host: Yeah.

Dan Huot: So, that’s been a lot of fun, and then it’s just, it’s working with SpaceX or Boeing and the entire NASA team, putting everything together, maybe doing a couple of practices, and then you’re off and running. I mean, for us, the SpaceX ones are fun, we get to do them from SpaceX Headquarters in Hawthorne. So, this, I mean, this is Leah [Cheshier] and Jessie [Anderson], I’m guessing maybe this was Crew-1. I’m not sure.

Host: I think it was, yeah.

Dan Huot: I think this was Crew-1. Yeah, they were on for the Crew-1 launch. And we do that because that’s where the mission is controlled from: right behind them that’s, that’s Hawthorne mission control, that’s where the SpaceX flight controllers are. And right on cue, there it is. That’s where the mission is controlled from. And that’s been kind of one of the driving philosophies that we’ve always had with mission coverage, is you, if you’re going to really deliver the best information, the most up-to-date information, you need to be where all of that’s being listened to, all of that’s being decided. And so that’s why for the SpaceX ones you see us out there in Hawthorne a lot. For the Boeing ones we’re here in Houston, because this is, this is where Starliner is being commanded and flown, monitored and everything. So, we get to travel around a little bit for both of them. But the — again, like the end goal of all of them is, it’s not just a NASA show, it’s not just a SpaceX, it’s not just a Boeing show, it’s the human spaceflight show. So, we’re always wanting to be side-by-side, talking about the mission together, because it is our mission. It’s our joint mission together.

Host: Yeah. You know what’s cool, is when we did this for the first time, you were over there, you were where Leah was, standing as the NASA person for Demo-2. We got to experience a little with Demo-1 as well. So, all this hard work that you’re talking about got put into Demo-1: Demo-1, didn’t you win like an Emmy or something like that?

Dan Huot: No.

Host: What was it? [Laughter]

Dan Huot: Yeah, yeah. We won the Emmy for Demo-1, which that one was a blast, because that was the first one, that was the first joint coverage that we did.

Host: Yeah.

Dan Huot: And I was fortunate to be the one that got to go out to SpaceX and do that. One of my most vivid memories from that was—and anybody that’s watched the SpaceX broadcast, you know—that they usually will have a big group of their employees that gather around mission control to watch, and can get pretty enthusiastic. And we did Demo-1 from kind of, literally right in front. And so, we were just in a big crowd of people. And aside from actually watching a rocket launch, that was easily like the most hype I’ve ever been, in a moment, but at the same time, it was really cool, but all that was going through my head is, I can’t hear a single thing that’s happening. And so that was one of the things we learned was, all right, well, once we put people in, the stakes are way up. And if something were to go wrong, we need to be able to hear it, and we need to know what’s happening. And so, we adjusted it a little bit, and you see us kind of up on their mezzanine now, where you can definitely hear, and that’s one thing that a lot of people might not always understand is, any time you see us talking on the air, we’re listening to usually three or four different conversations in our ears. So, you might have your TV producer talking to you, you’re listening to flight control loops, you’re listening to any of the conversations between the crew and the ground. So, you’re kind of juggling a lot of different things.

Host: Yeah.

Dan Huot: So, if you ever see us suddenly go, like, completely stone-faced and stop talking midsentence, we’re probably listening to something.

Host: Very actively.

Dan Huot: We try not to, but…we try not to just go stone-faced, but we’re always listening.

Host: Yeah, definitely. Now we’re getting a sense of, especially from the commentator’s perspective, what we’re doing on camera. We’re all in these different places. We’re representing different centers. We’re together in Hawthorne and in the Kennedy Space Center and everything, you’re showing this, this collaboration. What’s happening from the, behind the scenes, from the production rooms, about the, you know, who’s executing the shows, saying cut here, do this?

Dan Huot: Yeah. And that’s, those are easily the people that have to do the most work.

Host: Yeah.

Dan Huot: Because, again, you’re tying in broadcast locations from around the country, sometimes from extremely remote areas, with us; we’re taking in feeds from outer space. And so, the amount of technical coordination goes in is nothing short of enormous. And, again, we’re blessed to have just an incredibly dedicated team at NASA, and then we get to work with an equally dedicated and skilled team at SpaceX and at Boeing, where it’s a lot of, we get the question how the — how do we do this—question mark, question mark, question mark. And, you know, people don’t ever go, we can’t do that; they immediately think of new solutions, and sometimes it’s patchwork, last minute, you know, this feed just went down completely, how the heck do we do this now? And somehow we always find a way. So, we have an incredibly talented group of people that are able to do that. Camera operators, especially. Everyone knows they’re the true heroes. [Laughter] But — and it’s a lot, too, because, again, you’re bouncing between different areas. You have a mix of live video, the prelaunch show has packages, and it is just timed out to a T, and then every single time we time it out to a T we get into the real thing and it gets thrown completely off script, and you’re just adjusting in real time. And I mean, the end product is always something that we’re proud of.

Host: That’s as I think is another key piece, right there was, you have all of these different pieces coming together. You have the technical coordination. Everybody’s got to be studied, they got to be ready. But at any moment, you can take all of this planning that you’ve done, and you just have to throw it out the window because –

Dan Huot: Oh yeah.

Host: — we have to stick with the story that’s being told. If something’s going differently from how we’re predicting it’s going to go, we have to stick with it.

Dan Huot: Then in the moment we do it, in the aftermath, you think, man, we spent six months putting that piece together on this –

Host: Yeah.

Dan Huot: — and then, you know, Crew-1, they had to reopen the hatch. So, we had to follow that, before, before they lift off. So, I mean, you had big chunks of your planned show that you’re like, no, no, no, no. And I mean, that’s just the reality of live TV, you get to audible in real time. But again, that’s where NASA has a lot of experience, kind of doing that. We’ve been doing live mission coverage for decades, and we’ve been lucky to attract a lot of people that come in and come in with that very diverse skill set, that adaptability. I mean, it definitely sucks in the moment, to go, sorry, interviewer, whose been, or interviewee that’s been standing there for an hour, we’re skipping you.

Host: Yes.

Dan Huot: But sometimes it happens.

Host: My favorite moment, though, is launch. You put all this work together. Right? And a lot of times when we come on, we’re on, you know, we’ve done all the rehearsals, we’ve studied, we’ve done the sims, we’ve practiced contingency scenarios. And we’ve, even at the time of launch we’ve been on for hours. And then that moment comes, where everything’s working, and we get to see this thing lift off. And as you said, you got to hear cheers behind you during this moment. And I got to hear it, too. I got to be a part of it. And it’s just you have, your heart’s pumping during this moment when you’re seeing this, and you’re just, you’re watching it, but you’re actively thinking about and listening to everything that’s going on. I have something I want to say, but I’m actively listening. They’re pitching down range. Vehicle is stable and nominal. I’m listening to all of that, as it’s going through, just making sure that the story that we’re telling real time, as my heart is racing, is the accurate story that we’re telling.

Dan Huot: Yeah. It’s, and the crew launches, I mean, the way that we do them, you start your show, like you said, we’re on for hours. So, we start the show, I think, about four hours before a launch, because that’s when the crew is starting to get suited up and everything. And it’s tough to, because, you know, you know that this is the day that I’m going to go and, you know, we’re going to launch, we’re going to do everything. And then you start, and the adrenaline hits right as you start the show. And then you sit down for an hour, and then you have another couple of minutes, and then you sit down for an hour.

Host: Right.

Dan Huot: And so, and then once you get really into kind of that final 30 minutes is when it all like, it all hits, and it all really starts to feel real, and you’re going back through everything in your head, and you’re praying that the weather doesn’t turn. I still remember the second attempt on DM-2, where we all showed up after scrubbing the first day, and like, there’s no way we’re going to go today. And then, like an hour before a launch, like the skies opened up.

Host: The skies parted.

Dan Huot: And it’s like, oh, no, we’re actually doing this. I actually have to do this now.

Host: Yeah.

Dan Huot: And you go through the full gamut of emotions where, I mean, it’s always a little bit scary. It’s really exciting. Yeah, your heart’s going, but fortunately, I think we do a pretty good job of just kind of preparing people. So, I end up like not remembering a lot of it, like after, after the ascent, like you going to have to go back and, and watch again because it is just something like, you’re so in the moment, but it’s really exciting.

Host: Yeah. I know all the astronauts whenever we get to talk to them. I just recently when I interviewed Shane Kimbrough, I said, what’s going to be your favorite part of the mission? He says, returning home, because that’s the end of the mission. Right? And so even there, you said there was challenges, technical challenges, you said earlier, you said we’ll talk about them later, but the challenges specifically for, I mean, we talked a little bit about the desert, You said how fun that was for Boeing missions; for SpaceX missions, when you’re landing in the ocean, that presents a whole different type of technical challenge.

Dan Huot: Yeah. When it comes to, you know, what was hard technically, the return stuff is probably the hardest, at least just from everything that I was involved in, because it was a lot of, you’re basically starting from scratch. With launch, you, we already have so much infrastructure for covering a launch, just because we’ve been doing it for a very long time. And then with these shows, you had two companies, two spacecraft landing in two completely different environments, one in the ocean, off the coast of Florida, and then one at one of several deserts. And so, it’s still in this day and age not easy to get a video signal. It’s doable, but it’s not easy to get a video signal, let alone something really high def[inition] and pretty, from somewhere that’s so remote, where you’re almost entirely relying on a satellite uplink capability, which anybody who’s ever used a sat[ellite] phone or tried to set up their own kind of broadcast, it can be pretty finicky.

Host: Sure.

Dan Huot: And if it stops working, all of a sudden, you’re out of options, but it’s been fun to kind of, to figure those out with the SpaceX ones. We’ve got like an uplink that we’re able to use. For a bunch of the missions we’ve also used the WB-57, that’s NASA’s high-altitude research plane, to get some of the parachute events and everything. But I mean, it’s worth it when you see that on your screen and —

Host: Such a good shot.

Dan Huot: — the capsule’s coming down, and you see four good chutes or and splashing down in the water. So, we’ve got some pretty great capability now, and again there’s a team at Kennedy, a guy by the name of Mike Downs and his whole group, who’ve done just phenomenal work, to be able to get that signal out from the SpaceX splashdowns. And then the Boeing ones, which again, those are probably my favorite part that we do right now –

Host: Right.

Dan Huot: — just because when you’re on the boat, you’re a lot more space and personnel limited, so that’s one thing that landing in the desert helps, just like from purely showing people the mission, we have a little bit more capability, where, and one of my favorite things about the Boeing ones is we’re actually part of the operational team for this. We go out and set up a camera that provides situational awareness, the entire landing zone, back to the flight control team in mission control. So, we’re right in there with the convoy. We’re able to get everything set up. And again, it was a Boeing guy by the name of Tom Rule, who kind of is the godfather of all of that hardware that goes out there. And him and his guys and girls are just wizards at being able to get us as many different options as possible. And we’re able to bring people, just, you’re embedded inside the team that’s bringing them out, bring you right up to the hatch, when we start taking crew members out and everything, and it’s really fun. And they’ve got really cool solutions to get video back from there over here to Houston, where we’re able to mix it in and punch it out to the whole world. It’s, it was cool, like getting to start from a blank slate and figuring out how to do all this, and you’re bouncing around between two very different solutions for the both of them. But again, the end goal is we want to show people, we want to show you everything or as much as we possibly can. And I think we’ve done a pretty good job so far.

Host: Yeah. Honestly, it’s the, it shows, I think. I think a lot of people engage. We’ve had crazy numbers with the people that have tuned in, and I think, I think that really shows, that the people are interested in this stuff. And I think that’s exciting, too, that people really are interested in this stuff. I want to jump to questions now. We’ve talked a lot about Commercial Crew and got the inside scoop of what’s going on. So, let’s dive back into the questions. Thanks, because we’ve got a lot of them, actually, since we started talking again. So, this one’s from Brad who’s asking when media will be allowed back for in-person news conferences? So, this is due to COVID we’ve been doing remote.

Dan Huot: Yeah. That’s a good question. I mean, the short answer is hopefully soon. We’re going to be following all of the CDC guidance and everything else that the entire federal government is mandated to follow. We’re not going to do it until we can make sure that we’re keeping everybody safe. Things are obviously loosening up a little bit more now. We’re able to, if you’re fully vaccinated, do a couple more things on-site, which is why Gary and I aren’t wearing masks.

Host: Right. Yeah.

Dan Huot: And so, I think if things are continuing to trend good, we still see good vaccination rates and caseloads going down. Hopefully soon. I couldn’t give you a date, because it’d be wrong, but hopefully soon.

Host: Sure. All right. This next one’s from Anita. She’s asking or she’s saying, I love the show, the highlight of my Friday every week. Thank you, Anita. Will the podcast ever be recorded in space one day, do you think? I would really love to record a podcast in space. So, if you would like that, please let us know because I’ll go.

Dan Huot: I don’t think it’s in our budget to send Gary to space for an episode, but —

Host: We have had guests from space. You and I did one.

Dan Huot: We got to talk to Jack Fischer.

Host: Yeah. That was fun.

Dan Huot: The most excited astronaut in history.

Host: He was really fun to talk to. We had, I think it was like a, how we set it up was we got on and we were just chatting about just life in space, ahead of the downlink call, which we do every once in a while. We get downlinks, and we talk with schools, universities, media, whatever. But this one that we got to chat with Jack Fischer, and he was such an awesome guest. He, in between every question, he went on a different wall, if you remember. [Laughter]

Dan Huot: Yeah. He just spontaneously said, I’m going to flip walls every single time you guys ask me a question. So, he was just kind of rotating around like a clock.

Host: He was great.

Dan Huot: He was, he was so much fun.

Host: We did another one, too, where we talked about photography and just the perspective they had. So, we got, that’s, I got four astronauts that were on board at the same time. I think [Mark] Vande Hei was one of them. Vande Hei was one of my guests, so I got to interview a number of times. I think I’ve interviewed him four times, once from space, so, for the podcast, which is pretty cool. So, yeah. But if you want me to go, please let us know. We got another one from Calvin who’s asking, what made you come up with “Space to Ground,” short format? This is our short, weekly video we put on YouTube, two minutes, and we talk about the highlights from that week, kind of a compressed version, very compressed version, of what “Space Station Live” used to be.

Dan Huot: Yeah, and that was part of what it was. When the decision was made to, that came out initially when we were going to shorten “Space Station Live.” But one thing you would do every single Friday on “Space Station Live” is you would give a recap of the whole week. And so, the space station PAO at the time, Josh Byerly, came up with “Space to Ground,” and it’s been like one of our staple products for, for years now, where it’s kind of short, compact. The producer for it right now, Dexter Herbert, has done an incredible job, just kind of keeping the look fresh and working in, and we’ve been doing it all remote during COVID. And so, all of our hosts have done an incredible job just filming it in their own homes, and then Dex editing everything together. But it’s, it is that kind of that weekly bite size, we, we really like, it’s a lot of fun to make. I still crash the show every Christmas, to give myself an excuse to buy a new ugly Christmas sweater. But it’s a lot of fun. And yeah, it was just, it was another, it was one of the ways that we thought we could kind of more effectively tell people what’s happening on the station this week.

Host: Yeah. One more from Roger Weiss, another name we don’t recognize.

Dan Huot: A name we don’t know.

Host: Hey, Rog…Any plans to record interviews at other NASA centers? During COVID, actually, we’ve, same thing as “Space to Ground,” where all of our hosts are remote, we record all of our guests remote. That’s what we’ve been doing since COVID. And because of that, we’ve been having all of our interviews over the phone, which really broadens our reach. So, lately we’ve been talking with a bunch of people from a bunch of different NASA centers. I got some episodes coming up, we’re talking with interns from, it’s going to be me and interns from three different NASA centers, all at the same call. So, that provides a lot of different flexibility. Absolutely. We did one, another one early on was when we did with “NASA in Silicon Valley,” that’s just another podcast, and we did that one remote. I was with Shane Kimbrough at the time, just me and him in the booth, actually. We both had two microphones, and we were talking with the host and guest over there, over at Ames Research Center. So, we’re able to do it remote, which is, which is pretty nice. I haven’t gone over to another center, though, to record that.

Dan Huot: Yeah. And kind of like “Silicon Valley,” there are podcasts at other centers now. The podcast revolution kind of swept through NASA. I think “Silicon Valley” was the first one, and then you guys started this one.

Host: Yep. We were second, yep.

Dan Huot: I know, there’s “Rocket Ranch” out at KSC and there’s “Gravity Assist” at NASA Headquarters. So, that’s one of the things to remember is, we obviously talk about human spaceflight a lot; there’s so much more to NASA, whether it’s robotic missions or aeronautics, just really out there physics and just fundamental science and stuff. And so, there’s, if there’s some other aspect of NASA that we’re not hitting on, since we kind of tend to focus on the human spaceflight, there’s probably a NASA podcast out there that you can listen to that’s going to scratch that itch.

Host: On that, I got one more poll for our audience, and so this one, is about topics. So, of all of our Houston We Have a Podcast topics that we’ve had, which one interests you most? So, I got Mars, space station, science, engineering, astronauts, are the ones that I have listed. But if you have another topic that is of interest to you, life sciences or, you know, different biology, microbiology, whatever it may be, put in the comments. That’s what’s nice about the podcast. As you were saying, you know, we do human spaceflight, but we kind of broaden it a little bit more. And then there’s other NASA podcasts that go into maybe different astronomy or what’s going on at different NASA centers. So, we’ve got a little bit of everything, which is nice. All right. Going back to Commercial Crew in our coverage for a second, actually going beyond Commercial Crew, I kind of wanted to end with this, is Commercial Crew, I mean, what you have been helping to do and helping lead the charge to do is do things a little bit differently. Now we’re pulling in SpaceX and Boeing to come with us and tell this story of human spaceflight, but things are changing. We have private astronauts going to the International Space Station soon. We’re going to be going to the Moon, and we both talked about how excited we are about Artemis missions, but that’s all going to change how we do our mission commentary and how we tell these different stories. So, what are you looking forward to most?

Dan Huot: Yeah. It’s, I think I said it in a meeting the other day. It’s kind of a double-edged sword, where there’s all of this new stuff coming up, and so that’s really exciting. You’re going to be constantly kind of reinventing and figuring out new things and trying new things. At the same time, you don’t ever really get a breather, where you can just kind of, you know, let’s just keep doing this kind of show for a while, like, there’s always that pressure—or really that necessity—to change how you’re covering something. Because, I mean, you mentioned private astronauts. We’re figuring that all out right now, because they’ll be going to the space station so we’re involved, but they’re not NASA astronauts launching and it’s not a NASA mission. So, we just have to continue to evolve, you know, how we’re going to, but at the same time, it’s a critical step in the commercialization of low-Earth orbit, which is what we’ve been pushing so hard with space station for years now, and it’s really the cornerstone of making that possible. So, we obviously have a vested interest in it. Really, any time there’s human spaceflight, we’re a fan of it. And so how else can we kind of help cover that and augment it and, you know, really help tell the story. And then Artemis is, Artemis is going to be just kind of another complete reinvention. I’m really excited for that, just because, and our previous NASA administrator, Jim Bridenstine, would talk about this a lot, where you have multiple generations living on planet Earth that did not experience the first Moon landing; that it’s black and white footage, or it’s a textbook article for us. And when you look at the numbers of just how many people tuned in and how just pivotal a moment it stands out in the history of engineering and just human achievement. We’re going back to do that again. We’re taking that big leap again. And so, we better really have our stuff together, to bring the whole world along with it. And so, I’m really excited for kind of the new kind of technologies out there. We can make cameras smaller and, you know, increase resolution. I understand, everybody, we’re still at 720p for a lot of stuff; we’re working on it. And 4K is definitely in our future, because a moment like that deserves that, a moment like that deserves to be seen and experienced in just the best way possible and given to as many people as we could ever possibly reach. And so, tackling those challenges is going to be, it’s going to be exciting. It’s going to be hard, because it’s never as easy as just stick a camera on a spacecraft and point an antenna back at Earth. Every single pound that goes to the Moon is worth a lot of money and a lot of fuel. You don’t have an unlimited data plan when you’re sending stuff back and forth from the Moon. And believe it or not, 4K video eats up a lot of bandwidth. So, I mean, there’s challenges out there. But the cool thing is like we’re having those discussions right now. We’re thinking about how the heck are we going to do this? And it’s not something that’s, you know, way off in the future. Like, we need to have those meetings now, or we’re not going to be able to do it. And so that’s what’s really exciting.

Host: Dan, you’re very passionate about telling the story. And that’s what our job is. Our job is to tell that story. It’s to give that people what they are expecting, which is beautiful pictures of the Moon, when we return. It’s to tell stories, and we talked about “Space to Ground,” we’re doing a podcast, we’re doing everything we can to share what we’re doing and involve as many people as possible. So, when you think about NASA’s directive to reach out to the widest practicable, audiences, which is always — it’s our charter — and our passion for doing it, what really drives you to tell a story, to do things differently, to reach wider audiences?

Dan Huot: Well it’s, it really hits home when, especially, and that’s one of the things that social media has been so great for. When you see who it is that’s watching, it’s hard to, to kind of grasp that when you’re in the moment because, I mean, when we’re doing this right now, when we’re covering a launch or something, it’s me and like maybe a couple of other people in a room and that’s it. But with the advent of social media, you get a constant stream of this person checking in from Germany, this person checking in from India. You know, it’s the entire world will be tuning in. And so, when you have that kind of instant feedback that, oh, wow, like all of these people are paying attention, it helps kind of light the fire under you, to really do as much as you possibly can to make it a great show, to make it something that people want to watch and are excited and inspired by.

Host: Well, Dan, this has been awesome to have you on and talk about your passion for communication and just all the work you did to make, you know, to reach wider audiences and get them excited about what we’re doing. So, I appreciate you coming on. Thanks.

Dan Huot: Yeah, thanks. It’s, like I said, we did Episode 1 like ten feet over there, and it had a tiny little table and two microphones, never knowing what it would turn into. Here’s Episode 200, and I’m so impressed. Like, you guys have done an incredible job. And this is your baby. So, we’re really proud of you, Gary.

Host: Well, I wasn’t fishing for that, but thank you, Dan. That does mean a lot. [Laughter]

Dan Huot: You got it anyway.

Host: I do appreciate it. And thanks to you for watching. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for sending in your questions and engaging with us. This really did mean a lot to the both of us, to do something special for the 200th episode of Houston We Have a Podcast. I hope you really enjoyed it. Give us a rating, give us some feedback on Facebook and on our, wherever we are, Apple podcast, Google podcast, SoundCloud, and we hope you’ll tune in next time. See you then.

[ Music]

Host: Hey, thanks for sticking around. I really had a fun time recording this live, answering questions and of course, having Dan on again to chat about the podcast and about all the great work that he’s done. I hope you follow us. We’re on NASA.gov/podcast, and we’re one of many podcasts across the whole agency that you can follow and check out some of our content. You can follow us also on social media. We’re on the Johnson Space Center pages of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. If you want to talk to us, you can use the hashtag #AskNASA on any one of those platforms, submit an idea for the show, and just make sure to mention it for us, Houston We Have a Podcast. This episode was recorded live on June 8th, 2021. Thanks to Alex Perryman, Pat Ryan, Norah Moran, Belinda Pulido, Jennifer Hernandez, Dane Turner and the technical team for coordinating the Facebook Live, and Chelsey Ballarte for coming up with a live idea and supporting our efforts. Thanks again to Dan Huot for taking the time to come on the show and for his support throughout the years. And, of course, thanks to you, the listener, for engaging with us and for your feedback that allows us to keep providing this content to you. Give us a rating and feedback on whatever platform you’re listening to us on and tell us what you think of our podcast. We’ll be back next week.